Karnataka To Hold Special Assembly Session At Disputed Belagavi Tomorrow

Bengaluru: 

Karnataka will hold a symbolic session at its second assembly house in Belagavi tomorrow, amid the Centre’s efforts to enforce law and order and establish peace in the disputed Maharashtra-Karnataka border area. The session will begin at 11 am at the ‘Suvarna Vidhana Soudha’, modelled on the Vidhana Soudha, the seat of legislature in Bengaluru.

Karnataka had built a second assembly at Belagavi — an area that’s at the heart of the border row with Maharashtra. An assembly session is held there once a year to assert Karnataka’s claims to the Marathi speaking area, which got included in Karnataka in 1956 during the reorganisation of states on linguistic lines.

Belagavi was part of the erstwhile Bombay Presidency and its inclusion in Karnataka had upset Maharashtra. The resulting feud is continuing till date. A case is pending in the Supreme Court.

Over the last weeks, trucks from Maharashtra have been attacked in Karnataka and buses of the southern state have been defaced by workers of the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena.

The assembly session comes shortly after Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had a meeting with Union home minister Amit Shah and Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and agreed that while the case is being heard by the Supreme Court, neither state will make any move to assert its claims.  

“There has been an agreement that till the Supreme Court delivers its verdict, the state governments will not make any claim. The dispute should be resolved through talks. A committee will be formed with three ministers from each state,” Mr Shah had told reporters after the meeting on Wednesday.

Sources said the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samithi will stage a protest on the first day of the assembly. The symbolic sit-in protest will begin as the assembly session begins at 11 am.