Explained: What is the Maharashtra-Karnataka border dispute?

medium nocaption118644456On February 21, a Karnataka state transport bus conductor and driver were attacked by a group of people in Belagavi because the conductor didn’t speak to a college student in Marathi.The incident reopened the on-off border dispute between Maharashtra and Karnataka. The dispute, ongoing since 1956, revolves around 865 villages in three districts of Karnataka near the border which have a substantial Marathi-speaking population. Maharashtra has claimed the 865 villages along the border of the two states, which it claims has a majority of Marathi-speaking residents. Karnataka has maintained the 865 villages are part of its territory and has claimed instead that it should get control over 200 villages in Maharashtra because they have a Kannada-speaking majority. Protests have erupted in both states for decades. Political leaders of both states have exchanged barbs. A case is pending before the Supreme Court.The latest flare upOn February 21, bus conductor Basavaraj Hukkeri demanded that a female college student’s male companion buy a ticket.They got into an argument when the college student demanded that the conductor speak to her in Marathi. Soon afterwards, around 20 people boarded the bus and assaulted the bus driver and the conductor.The police filed a case under the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act against the conductor, based on a complaint by the student.On February 22, in an apparent act of retaliation, miscreants attacked and blackened the face of a Maharashtra state transport bus driver in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district.Maharashtra’s transport minister Pratap Sarnaik, ordered the suspension of the state’s bus services to Karnataka. He said Maharashtra could consider deploying security marshals on buses to Karnataka in the future.Sarnaik is from the Shiv Sena, which has a history of campaigning for the disputed villages' integration into Maharashtra. The party’s founder Bal Thackeray was once at the forefront of the campaign to have the disputed villages transferred to Maharashtra.In 1968, Thackeray wrote to then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi threatening not to let any Congress leader into the state if a central committee’s recommendations on resolving the border dispute were accepted. Thackeray was arrested and spent 75 days in jail in 1969 after a protest rally over the issue sparked a riot-like situation in Mumbai (then Bombay). mediumhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF1iGHGunt0So, how did this dispute start?Soon after India’s Independence, the State Reorganisation Act, 1956 was passed which would create new states. Among the criteria for formation of states were linguistic, cultural, geographical and economic factors.The state of Maharashtra came into existence in 1960, but the Samyukta Maharashtra movement continued to agitate for the unification of all territories where Marathi-speaking people were in a majority, including the now-disputed ones. One of the biggest demands of the movement was that Bombay (now Mumbai) be included in Maharashtra and not be given to the neighbouring state of Gujarat. The protests were successful and the city was included in Maharashtra in 1960. mediumhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eyrO-nbaB0The movement also sought the inclusion of 865 villages in what was then the princely state of Mysore (now Karnataka).What Maharashtra wanted:385 villages and five tehsils in Belgaum district299 villages and three tehsils in Karwar district181 villages and four tehsils in Bidar district !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r What a central government-appointed commission saidIn October 1966, the central government formed a commission under retired Chief Justice of India MC Mahajan to explore Maharashtra’s claim over the 865 villages. In less than a year the commission filed a report rejecting Maharashtra’s claim.Instead, it recommended around 264 villages be transferred to Maharashtra and 245 villages in Maharashtra be transferred to Karnataka.After threats from leaders like Thackeray, Maharashtra rejected the report despite the fact that then chief minister Vasantrao Naik was believed to be in favour of the recommendations. The state then demanded a review. The state of Karnataka, on the other hand, welcomed the commission’s report and pressed for its enactment. However, the report’s recommendations were never implemented by the central government. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r How Maharashtra has tried to win over residentsOver the decades there have been multiple commissions and committees to look into the issue as well as multiple protests in both states.The Maharashtra government has announced different schemes and concessions for Marathi-speaking people in the disputed districts of Karnataka if they want to pursue education or government jobs in Maharashtra. medium118644949In 2022, Home Minister Amit Shah met with the leaders of the two states and it was decided that both states would respect the ongoing process to resolve the issue. However, the BJP government in Karnataka led by Basavaraj Bommai passed a resolution in the state assembly stating that the border issue had been settled. “Condemning border disputes created by Maharashtra people unnecessarily, this house unanimously passes a resolution that it is committed to protect the interest of the state,” the resolution said. In response, the coalition government in Maharashtra led by Eknath Shinde passed a resolution in the state assembly seeking to acquire the disputed villages in Karnataka. What Karnataka has done to affirm control over the regionsThe state has always maintained that the settlement of boundaries is final as per the States Reorganisation Act and the Mahajan Commission report.On its part, Karnataka has done a lot to assert its control over the region. It renamed Belgaum as Belagavi in 2014 and constructed a ‘Suvarna Vidhana Soudha’, where a legislative session is conducted once a year.In 2022, the state passed a resolution to not give an inch of any village’s land to Maharashtra. Villagers in the region have to use Kannada for all government correspondence and in public education.Karnataka has also demanded multiple times that villages in Maharashtra that have a majority of Kannada-speaking residents be made part of the state.In 2004, the Maharashtra government had approached the Supreme Court seeking administrative control over Belagavi. However, multiple judges have recused themselves from hearing the petition and there has been no progress in the matter.