Border row: Maharashtra ministers unlikely to travel to Karnataka's Belagavi

Maharashtra ministers Chandrakant Patil and Shambhuraj Desai, who was tasked to coordinate the state's border issue with Karnataka, are unlikely to visit Belagavi on Tuesday because both ministers have meetings scheduled in Maharashtra.

The two ministers were previously planned to meet with activists from the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti in Belagavi, Karnataka, on Tuesday to discuss the decades-old border dispute.

On Monday, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said he would ask his Maharashtra counterpart Eknath Shinde not to send his cabinet ministers to Belagavi since their presence could disrupt the law and order situation in the border district.

Reacting to the remark, Maharashtra's Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that Chief Minister Shinde would make the final decision on whether the ministers assigned to manage the state's border dispute with Karnataka should visit the disputed areas or not. 

Chandrakant Patil's close associate said, "The minister was in Pune on Monday and had a lot of meetings slated in Mumbai on Tuesday." The minister declared that he would attend all meetings in his official calendar. I am not aware of any plans for him to visit Belagavi."

Also, the official working with Desai said the minister has many scheduled meetings, and he will attend them. 

"Whether or not he will travel to Belagavi today is unknown to us. If he has other plans, we don't know about them," according to the officials.

Last week, Patil said that the Madhyavarti Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti, an organisation fighting to merge Belgaum and a few other border places with Maharashtra, had requested discussions on the Maharashtra-Karnataka border issue to be held with volunteers. 

Since its formation in 1960, Maharashtra has been entangled in a conflict with Karnataka over the status of the Belagavi district and 80 other Marathi-speaking villages controlled by the southern state. Currently, the case is before Supreme Court.

(With inputs from PTI)

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• Basavaraj Bommai
• Belagavi
• Chandrakant Patil
• Devendra Fadnavis
• Eknath Shinde
• Karnataka
• Maharashtra
• Shambhuraj Desai