The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Mayor Kishori Pednekar has said the mother tongue of about 40 lakh people in these villages is Marathi. They want to be part of Maharashtra.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a request to merge 865 border villages in over 7,000 sq km area in the districts of Belagavi (Belgaum), Uttara Kannada, Bidar, and Gulbarga, and the towns of Belagavi, Karwar, and Nippani, presently part of Karnataka, with Maharashtra.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Mayor Kishori Pednekar has said the mother tongue of about 40 lakh people in these villages is Marathi. They want to be part of Maharashtra.
These villages were made part of Karnataka in 1956.
This is not the first time that this matter has arisen in the last 13 months of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government.
She further stated that these people have been fighting against the state (Karnataka) for the last 65 years.
“On the occasion of August 9 (Revolution Day), I am requesting you to include these 40 lakh people in Maharashtra,” Pednekar said.
For decades, Maharashtra has been asking for Belgaum to be made part of the state, but Karnataka has continually refused to accept the demand.
Earlier this week, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar released a book published by the state government, titled ‘Maharashtra-Karnataka Seemavad: Sangharsh Aani Sankalp’ (Maharashtra-Karnataka Boundary Dispute: Struggle and Pledge. Thackeray said that until the Supreme Court gives its verdict on the dispute, the areas should be declared a Union Territory.
Pawar, however, said the government must make all legal efforts to ensure a favourable verdict in the apex court.
The matter has been in the Supreme Court since 2004.
Meanwhile, the erstwhile Bombay Presidency, a multilingual province, included the present-day Karnataka districts, Vijayapura, Belagavi, Dharwad, and Uttara Kannada.
This is not the first time this matter has arisen in the last 13 months of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government.
Senior ministers, Eknath Shinde and Chhagan Bhujbal, are heading the coordination committee to oversee the expeditious resolution of the case in favour of Maharashtra in the Supreme Court.
Late last year, to express support for Marathi-speaking people in Karnataka, the Maharashtra government asked all ministers to wear black bands on November 1, which is celebrated in Karnataka as Rajyotsava or state Formation Day.
