After four days of battling it out over the cotton farmers’ plight, the treasury and the opposition benches were on the same page in condemning the Karnataka’s dismissal of the Belgaum municipal council earlier on Thursday.
After four days of battling it out over the cotton farmers’ plight, the treasury and the opposition benches were on the same page in condemning the Karnataka’s dismissal of the Belgaum municipal council earlier on Thursday.
The Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti, advocating the merger of Belgaum with Mahrashtra on the grounds that Marathi speakers are in majority there, was governing the council, which was suspended after the mayor and the deputy mayor took part in a rally against Belgaum’s merger with Karnataka.
Strongly condemning Karnataka’s “anti-democratic move against a linguistic minority group”, both the assembly and the council unanimously adopted a resolution terming the dismissal as “unconstitutional and without reason”. Read out by the chief minister in the Vidhan Sabha and by the deputy chief minister in the Vidhan Parishand, the resolution urged that the Belgaum municipality be restored forthwith. It demanded that until the Supreme Court hearing the case decides on the matter, Belgaum be turned into a Union territory.
BJP, which rules Karnataka, had a tough time proving that it stood with Maharashtra on the Belgaum issue. “Where it is a question of Marathi speakers and Marathi pride, we stand shoulder to shoulder with the other parties in the state,” said assembly opposition leader Eknath Khadse.
No business could be transacted in the morning, when opposition members led by the Shiv Sena and the MNS insisted on a discussion over the dismissal of Belgaum municipality. Later, speaker Dilip Valse-Patil called a meeting of all the legislative heads of the political parties to prepare the resolution, which took two hours, before it was read out in the assembly and council.
Sena leader Ramdas Kadam demanded the resolution to seek dismissal of the Karnataka government, but it was not adopted.
CM Prithviraj Chavan said he will lead a all-party delegation to Delhi to meet the prime minister, urging him to resolve the Belgaum row as soon as possible.
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