Battle for Belagavi

KARNATAKA/ MAHARASHTRA

- Ajay Sukumaran

As disputes between states go, the row over Belagavi (formerly Belgaum) has a life of its own. Simmering for decades, it periodically froths over—like it did last December and the year before, with many iterations going back in time to India’s state reorganisation on linguistic grounds beginning in the mid-1950s. On all occasions, tensions had risen temporarily in the border district that belongs to Karnataka but which Maharashtra has, for decades, claimed as its territory—on the emotive grounds that it has a significant population of Marathi speakers. It has resurfaced this year too, amid an explosion of rhetoric that had the biggest political players on both sides weighing in, with everyone girding up ahead of Supreme Court proceedings.

In Maharashtra, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde met an all-party panel on the border dispute and even promised to extend the CM’s relief fund coverage and freedom fighter pensions to families that were involved in the decades-long revanchist struggle. The ‘provocation’ got an equally sharp response, for Belagavi is an equally emotive issue for Kannada speakers. All border disputes, retorted Shinde’s Karnataka counterpart Basavaraj Bommai, had ended with the States’ Reorganisation Act in 1956. But since there’s a lawsuit in court, Karnataka’s top priority was arguing its case well, he said, adding, “We have strong grounds.” Not to be outdone, the Karnataka CM also spoke of providing freedom fighter pensions across the border and funds for Kannadamedium schools there—for there also exist notable Kannada-speaking areas in Maharashtra. Bommai has also appointed a new chairman to the Karnataka Border and River Protection Commission (a position that had been lying vacant) and proposed an all party-meeting on his side of the fence to discuss the issue.