The government's stand is that the Centre didn’t abide by the linguistic criterion exercised predominantly in the division of states when it came to the 865 sugarcane growing villages.
Maharashtra has a reason to cheer in its dispute with Karnataka over the inclusion in that state of 865 Marathi-speaking villages in four districts — Belgaum, Karwar, Gulbarga and Bidar.
The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday allowed the Maharashtra government to file a fresh petition for including additional grounds in its lawsuit filed in 2004 over the border dispute. The government will take strong exception to the Centre’s inertia in resolving the long-pending dispute. Its stand is that the Centre didn’t abide by the linguistic criterion exercised predominantly in the division of states when it came to the 865 sugarcane growing villages.
An SC bench of justices JM Panchal and AK Patnaik granted Maharashtra four weeks to amend its main suit. The state’s counsels, Harish Salve, Vinod Bobde and Shivaji Munjajirao Jadhav, said basic and settled principles like “wish of the people” and “linguistic criterion” were not followed by the Centre in ceding the four districts to Karnataka. They said theses factors were considered for the demarcation of boundaries like the one between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana, and Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Karnataka’s counsel Fali Sam Nariman opposed Maharashtra’s application for amending the six-year-old lawsuit. The state has earlier spoken about the violation of the principle laid down for the reorganisation of states under article 3 of the constitution. Karnataka has claims on Kannada-speaking areas in Maharashtra. While Maharashtra says there was “hostile discrimination” in settling its border dispute with Karnataka.
Maharashtra rejected the recommendations of the Mahajan Commission on the dispute, while Karnataka accepted them, saying they were just and fair.
Meanwhile, the Centre has sought the rejection of Maharashtra’s application. In its response, filed on Friday, the Centre said that the reorganisation of states was carried out in 1956 and 1960 on the basis of various criteria, language being only one of them — not the sole factor.
The Centre said in its affidavit that both Parliament and the Union government had considered all relevant factors while considering the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, and the Bombay Reorganisation Act, 1960, in deciding which villages, talukas and municipal areas were to be included in the concerned states.
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