Politics over people in Karnataka-Maharashtra dispute
For a problem that has been ongoing for 66 years, the Karnataka-Maharashtra border dispute, at its core, is not an issue of the common Kannada- or Marathi-speaking folks. It has more to do with revenue and political mileage and was fanned by political elements from both sides, driving the language factor to the hilt to keep the issue alive for over six-and-a-half decades—Belagavi (erstwhile Belgaum) and its surrounding areas, including revenue-yielding Khanapur (rich in forest resources) and Nipani (abundant in tobacco), being at the core of the dispute.
The dispute kept taking a serious turn, and in 1966, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government constituted the Meherchand Mahajan Commission. The Commission conducted detailed surveys between August of that year to September 1967. It recommended that 264 villages, towns and cities from Karnataka be merged with Maharashtra, and 248 from Maharashtra be merged with Karnataka. But Belgaum was to remain an integral part of Karnataka. Both states rejected the Commission’s recommendations. In 2004, the Maharashtra government constituted a committee under legal expert Y V Chandrachud and filed a petition in the Supreme Court, demanding Belgaum and its adjoining areas among 865 villages, towns and cities of Karnataka to be merged with it. The case is before the SC.
At ground zero, it is the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES) for Maharashtra and pro-Karnataka organisations like Karnataka Rakshana Vedike for Karnataka which have been keeping the issue alive. But the ones taking the brunt of the frequent protests and acts of violence are—like always in such disputes—the common people, irrespective of the language they speak. Protests and violence force businesses to shut, affecting the livelihood of the common folk. Vehicles of innocent people travelling between the two states are targeted. Police from both states stop motorists with vehicles bearing registration numbers of the other state and subject them to harassment near border check posts.
Deep below the political facade of this ongoing issue, the people of the two states share strong cultural, artistic, traditional and culinary ties—even more so in the interstate border areas. They are the real people for whom development matters the most, not the ones driving political agendas by claiming each other’s territories that anyway belong to the same country. It is time ordinary people are placed at the centre stage.