BJP govts in K’taka, Maha stoking tensions: Siddu

NT Correspondent

Belagavi / Mysuru: Leader of the Opposition (LOP) in the Assembly Siddaramaiah on Thursday accused the BJP governments in Karnataka and Maharashtra of being hand in glove in stoking the Belagavi border dispute. “There are BJP governments in both Karnataka and Maharashtra.

Both of them must be talking behind the scenes and purposefully creating a tense situation,” Siddaramaiah said. “The Karnataka and Maharashtra border dispute has already been settled as per the Mahajan Commission report.

However, Maharashtrians are digging it back up and keeping the issue alive for political reasons. Now the government there has filed a petition in the Supreme Court saying Belagavi should be merged with their state. They had filed a similar petition when we were in power. At the time, we had argued that the petition was not legitimate.

Now, the government is in a position where they should hire good lawyers to argue their case,” he added. Siddaramaiah also slammed Karnataka’s buses being subjected to vandalism in Maharashtra, demanding why the BJP-Shinde Sena coalition government in the neighbouring state had not acted against the vandals.

He suggested that Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde and Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai seek the help of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president JP Nadda to scale down tensions.

“The government of Maharashtra is taking extreme measures against Kannadigas there by filing stringent cases against them. Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai should contact the chief minister of that state and provide protection to the Kannadigas of Maharashtra,” Siddaramaiah said, adding that the BJP’s “double engine” government in Bengaluru and New Delhi wasn’t doing enough.

The border issue was reignited on November 22 when Bommai “seriously laid claim” to Jath taluk in Sangli district in Maharashtra. He said that a team of senior advocates had been preparing a case to take before the Supreme Court.

This caused violence and vandalism in both states, with Maharashtra ministers Chandrakant Patil and Shambhuraj Desai declaring that they would come down to Belagavi city to speak with Maharashtra Ekikaran Samithi (MES), a political party with the single point agenda of merging Belagavi district with Maharashtra. Since then the ministers have postponed their visit.