Pune: With the regime change in Maharashtra, the long festering Maharashtra-Karnataka border dispute over the status of Belagavi district once again flared up on Sunday. The flared up tensions compelled Maharashtra police to suspend bus services between Kolhapur (in western Maharashtra) and Belagavi (in Karnataka) as a precautionary measure.
Political temperatures on the both the sides of the disputed border rose over the recent controversial statement by Karnataka Navnirman Sena (KNS) chief Bhimashankar Patil, who allegedly said that leaders of the Belagavi-based Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES) “ought to be shot dead”. Patil’s remarks evoked predictably strong reactions from the Shiv Sena, which has lent political support to the MES throughout its decades-long struggle.
This was followed today by the Karnataka Navnirman Sena (KNS), a regional outfit in Belagavi staging protests. In retaliation the Shiv Sena staged protests in Kolhapur and Sangli districts prompting Maharashtra police authorities to stop State Transport bus services from Kolhapur to Belagavi. Likewise, their Karnataka counterparts took similar measures, causing passenger traffic coming to a grinding halt on the Kolhapur-Belagavi route.
Earlier in the day, a large crowd of Sena activists burnt an effigy of Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa near the Kolhapur ST Stand, while Yuva Sena workers stormed into a local cinema in Kolhapur city and halted the screening of a popular Kannada-language film. According to local sources, the Sena’s youth wing activists barged into the Apsara Theater and stopped the screening of the film Avane Srimannarayana, while warning the theater owners to desist from showing any Kannada movies.
The Sena-backed MES, which represents the interests of the Marathi-speaking population in Belagavi, has long been agitating for the merger of the Marathi-speaking border areas with Maharashtra. It has long been arguing that Belagavi which has a significant Marathi-speaking population should be an integral part of Maharashtra.
Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has even referred to Belagavi and its nearby areas where people chiefly speak Marathi as ‘Karnataka occupied Maharashtra’, drawing ire of Karnataka politicos including Kannada Culture Minister C.T. Ravi. Lashing out at Bhimashankar Patil, Sena MP from Hatkanangale (in Kolhapur), Dhairyasheel Mane said that at a time when the border dispute matter was pending in the Supreme Court, certain people (Bhimashankar Patil) were making shameful statements and escalating tensions on linguistic grounds.
An angry Dhairyasheel Mane who led the protests in Kolhapur remarked “they (KNS) has had the audacity to burn the effigy of our Chief minister and party leader Uddhav Thackeray, who has shown utmost restraint in dealing with this issue. Our protest today, in which a number of MES leaders participated, is to send a strong message that the Sena stands firmly behind the Marathi-speaking populace in Karnataka, in the event outfits like the KNS attempt to harm even a single strand of hair on their heads, the Sena will storm into Karnataka and answer in kind”.
He further added, “the Sena has so far safeguarded the rights of people from Karnataka who have settled in Maharashtra. Now, it is the duty of the Karnataka government to create a climate of security for Marathi-speaking people in Belagavi and condemn statements by outfits like the KNS”.
The KNS leaders controversial “shooting dead” remarks has once again stirred the hornet’s nest with the KNS and the Sena, both regional and chauvinistic parties, attempting to outdo each other in both rhetoric and actions. While the KNS defaced Marathi-language hoardings and billboards in Belagavi and adjoining areas today, so Sena activists, in retaliation, blackened Kannada-language hoardings and hotel billboards in Kolhapur city.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had earlier this month appointed minister’s Chhagan Bhujbal and Eknath Shinde as ‘co-ordinators’ to oversee his government’s efforts to expedite the resolution of the boundary dispute. The issue has been festering for more than 60 years.
Belgaum, as Belagavi was known till recently, was earlier part of the Bombay State, before it was merged into the Mysore State (later Karnataka) at the time of the Reorganisation of State’s on linguistic lines in 1956. The MES was formed in1948 and since then has been vehemently opposing the regions merger with Karnataka and still continue to do so even today.
