Maharashtra-Karnataka border row: Amit Shah meets MVA MPs, assures state's interests to be protected

New Delhi, December 9

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Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who met a delegation of MPs belonging to the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in his Parliament House office here today, has assured them that the state’s interests would be protected while finding a solution to the boundary dispute with Karnataka.

Belagavi dispute

• At the time of Independence, Belagavi (then Belgaum) was part of Bombay state, which included parts of present-day Maharashtra and Karnataka
• As per the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, boundaries of states and UTs were redrawn along linguistic lines
• At that time, Maharashtra had claimed that hundreds of villages, where the dominant language was Marathi, were wrongly handed over to the Mysore state where Kannada was the main language
• Mysore was renamed Karnataka in 1973

Solution soon

We discussed with Home Minister Amit Shah the statements of the Karnataka Chief Minister. He assured that the problem will be solved soon and the interests of Maharashtra will be protected. — Priyanka Chaturvedi, Shiv sena Uddhav faction’s spokesperson

It is also learnt that the Home Minister is likely to meet Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his Karnataka counterpart Basavaraj Bommai on December 14 to discuss the matter with them.

The delegation that met Shah was led by NCP leader Supriya Sule and comprised MPs from her party and the alliance partners — Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and the Congress.

It sought his intervention to maintain law and order in border districts between the two states, where the “situation is alarming”.

After the meeting, Shiv Sena Uddhav faction’s spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Priyanka Chaturvedi said, “We discussed with Home Minister Amit Shah the statements of the Karnataka Chief Minister. He assured that the problem would be solved soon and the interests of Maharashtra would be protected.”

NCP leader Amol Kolhe, who was a part of the delegation, said Shah would meet the two CMs on December 14.

During the meeting, the MVA delegation told Shah that the border row between Maharashtra and Karnataka had reached such a crucial stage that it could turn into a full-blown violence, he added.

On her part, Sule, while thanking Shah for giving the delegation a patient hearing, said, “The delegation expressed concern about the border tension and resultant violence in the wake of the statements made by the Chief Minister of Karnataka about Maharashtra and the attacks on the Marathi people on the border areas.”

Reports from the ground suggest that the situation is tense and police personnel have been deployed in large numbers to prevent any untoward incident.