KA-BORDER DISPUTE-SAVADI

'Will not tolerate trouble to Kannadigas in Maharashtra on
border issue'
Bengaluru, Jan 1 (PTI) Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister
Laxman Savadi on Wednesday warned that the state government
would not tolerate any trouble to Kannadigas in Maharashtra
over the Belagavi border issue.
"I want to tell the Maharashtra Chief Minister that the
Karnataka government will not tolerate any trouble to
Kannadigas in Maharashtra," he told reporters here.
His statement comes in the backdrop of Shiv Sena workers
reportedly hitting the streets in Kolhapur on Sunday and
burning effigies of Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa
and Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai and stopping screening of
Kannada films there.
The activists had also blackened billboards, having
Kannada text, of some shopkeepers in Gandhinagar area.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had in
December last year appointed ministers Chhagan Bhujbal and
Eknath Shinde as co-coordinators to oversee his government's
efforts to expedite the case relating to the boundary dispute
with Karnataka.
The Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti, which has been fighting
for the merger of 800 odd villages with Maharashtra, had
recently submitted a memorandum of their demands to Uddhav
Thackeray.
Maharashtra claims the border district of Belagavi was
part of the erstwhile Bombay Presidency, but is currently a
district of Karnataka, on linguistic grounds.
Savadi, who hails from Belagavi, said the Maharashtra
Chief Minister would do well to recall what his cousin Raj
Thackeray had said in the past on the matter.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray had
said in October 2014 in Mumbai politicians from the state
have never been serious about finding a solution to the
dispute and the issue has always been used for politics.
The MNS chief had recalled that when MEK members had met
him a few years ago, he had said he was prepared, if required,
to meet the then Karnataka chief minister to discuss the issue
and demand that there should not be injustice on Marathi
speaking people living in Belgaum and nearby areas.
On December 30, Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa
had accused Uddhav Thackeray of raking up the Belagavi issue
again for political gains and declared that 'not even an
inch of land' would be given away. PTI GMS APR
APR APR

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)