Mumbai: The language row between Maharashtra and Karnataka showed no signs of subduing on Saturday with incidents of vandalism taking place mostly along the Belagavi border with bus services being stopped from both sides.
The trigger point came on Friday night after a Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (KRTC) bus driver and conductor were assaulted by a group of people after an argument over the duo not replying to a passenger in Marathi in Balekundri (KH) village near Belagavi.
On the contrary, some passengers claimed the conductor spoke to them in Kannada and refused to give them tickets when they replied in Marathi, saying they did not know Kannada. A video of the altercation also went viral, showing the driver getting beaten by an angry group.
Following the incident, employees of the Kolhapur Bus Depot halted all state transport buses heading towards Belagavi, Karnataka with Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiva Sena UBT also coming in support of the transport workers. While abuse service from Karnataka have also been stopped.
A long-standing border dispute
The Maharashtra-Karnataka border dispute is decades old. A large Marathi-speaking population resides in Belagavi, and Maharashtra claims the region as part of its territory. However, Karnataka refuses to cede control of Belagavi district. Similar tensions have also been witnessed over the sharing of Cauvery river water between the border districts of the two states.
The Belagavi district, also known as Belgaum, has been a focal point of one of India’s biggest inter-state border disputes. The region is home to both Marathi and Kannada-speaking populations and has remained a contentious issue for decades.
During the reorganisation of states in 1956, Belagavi was placed under Karnataka’s administration. To resolve the dispute, the central government formed a commission led by former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Mehr Chand Mahajan. However, the matter is still pending in the Supreme Court.
In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that borders cannot be redrawn solely based on linguistic differences. This statement strengthened Karnataka’s position in the dispute. However, Maharashtra argues that the residents of these disputed areas wish to be part of Maharashtra.
