The scheduled visit of a Maharashtra delegation to Belagavi in the neighbouring state of Karnataka was called off on Tuesday in wake of the ongoing border row between the two states.
Maharashtra ministers Chandrakant Patil and Shambhuraj Desai, appointed for coordinating the state’s border dispute with Karnataka, were earlier scheduled to meet activists of the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti at Belagavi in the southern state on Tuesday and hold talks with them on the decades-old border issue.
Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Monday said he will ask his Maharashtra counterpart Eknath Shinde not to send his cabinet colleagues to Belagavi as their visit may disrupt the law and order situation in the border district.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday morning, Desai said, “We have not cancelled the visit. We have rescheduled it. It is Mahaparinirvan Din, and on this occasion, we do not want our visit to cause any untoward incident in Belagavi.”
On November 30, the Supreme Court was scheduled to hear arguments about the maintainability of a petition filed by the Maharashtra government, challenging some provisions of the State Reorganisation Act, 1956 and demanding 865 villages from five districts of Karnataka.
The two states have been at loggerheads over the inclusion of some towns and villages along the border ever since the State Reorganisation Act was passed by the Parliament in 1956. The Act was based on the findings of the Justice Fazal Ali Commission, which was appointed in 1953 and submitted its report two years later.
Mysore, later renamed as Karnataka, was formed on November 1, 1956, which led to the differences between the state and neighbouring Bombay state, later known as Maharashtra.
Maharashtra was of the view that Belagavi district should be part of the state. This led to a decade-long violent agitation and the subsequent formation of Maharashtra Ekikaran Samithi (MES), which still holds sway in parts of the district and the eponymous city.
Amid the protests and Maharashtra’s demands, the Centre set up a commission under retired Supreme Court judge Justice Meharchand Mahajan on October 25, 1966. S S Nijalingappa was the Karnataka Chief Minister then and VP Nayak was his Maharashtra counterpar, reported The Indian Express.
The report was formed with an aim to bring an end to the dispute. The commission submitted its report in August 1967, in which it recommended that 264 towns and villages of Karnataka (including Nippani, Nandgad and Khanapur) be merged with Maharashtra, and 247 villages of Maharashtra (including South Solapur and Akkalkot) be merged with Karnataka.