Wednesday will see a BJP vs BJP battle as the Supreme Court gets ready to hear Maharashtra’s petition on a protracted territorial dispute with Karnataka. The dispute has been simmering since Maharashtra laid claim over Belagavi and some other Marathi-speaking areas that it says were wrongly given to Kannada-majority Karnataka in the language-based reorganisation of the 1960s.
On Tuesday, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai visited Delhi to meet BJP chief JP Nadda and consult senior lawyers, including former Attorney General of India Mukul Rohatgi who will appear for the southern state.
While Karnataka says Maharashtra’s plea is invalid since the reorganisation has not been reviewed in the case of any state, the latter — which is now headed by BJP-backed Eknath Shinde — insists that Sena founder Bal Thackeray was “always a supporter of the state’s demand to make Belgaum (Belagavi) a part of Maharashtra”.
As the dispute reaches the doors of the Supreme Court, News18 takes a look at its genesis and the way ahead:
What is the Border Dispute?
Belgaum was originally part of the multilingual Bombay Presidency. Districts in Karnataka such as Vijayapura, Belagavi, Dharwad, and Uttara Kannada were previously part of the Bombay Presidency. Belgaum became a part of Bombay State after India’s independence in 1947. According to the 1881 census, 64.39 percent of people in Belgaum spoke Kannada, while 26.04 percent spoke Marathi.
However, in the 1940s, Marathi-speaking politicians dominated Belgaum and requested that the district be included in the proposed Samyukta Maharashtra state.
Despite their protests, the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 incorporated Belgaum and ten talukas from Bombay State into the then Mysore State, which was renamed Karnataka in 1973. The Act divided states along linguistic and administrative lines.
The Mahajan Commission Report
The Bombay government filed a protest with the Centre, which resulted in the formation of the Mahajan Commission in 1966, led by former Chief Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan.
In its 1967 report, the Commission granted Maharashtra 264 villages in the disputed region and Karnataka 247 villages. However, the commission decided that the Belgaum should remain in Karnataka. While Maharashtra rejected the report, Karnataka demanded status quo.
The Maharashtra government filed a petition in the Supreme Court in 2006, claiming ownership of Belgaum. According to the state government, there has been a “feeling of insecurity among the Marathi speaking people living in Karnataka in recent days.” Meanwhile, the Belgaum district, as well as the city of Belgaum, remain a part of Karnataka.
The winter game
Every time the Karnataka Assembly session is held in Belagavi, tensions crop up between the states. In 2021, during the Belagavi session, an MES activist’s face was blackened by Kannada activists for organising an event demanding the merger of Belagavi with Maharashtra. Days later, the statue of freedom fighter and Kannada icon Sangolli Rayanna in Belagavi city was vandalised, Indian Express reported.
The states reorganisation act
The States Reorganisation Act, 1956, reformed the boundaries of Indian states and territories, systematising them on the basis of language. The newly drafted Constitution of India, which came into force on January 26, 1950, divided states into four main types: Part A, Part B, Part C, and Part D.
Part A states were former governors’ provinces of British India, while Part B were former princely states or groups of princely states. Part C states comprised both the former chief commissioners’ provinces and some princely states and Part D was administered by a lieutenant governor appointed by the central government.
At the time of Independence in 1947, India had more than 500 disjointed princely states that were temporarily divided into Part A, B, C, and D states. The State Reorganisation Commission was constituted on December 29, 1953, to look into redrawing state boundaries, mainly on the basis of languages, to make administration easier and replace caste and religion-based identities with the less-controversial linguistic identities.
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