Belagavi: Maharashtra-Karnataka border row that escalated last month is refusing to die down. Maharashtra ministers Chandrakant Patil and Shambhuraj Desai’s visit to Belagavi (Karnataka) was cancelled after Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai cautioned the ministers against visiting Belagavi.

Acting on the direction of the Maharashtra government, Chandrakant Patil and Shambhuraj Desai, coordinating ministers for the Maharashtra-Karnataka border row, were scheduled to travel to Belagavi on Tuesday to address the border issue, but their schedule is now cancelled.

Karnataka-Maharashtra border dispute escalated after Maharashtra made claims over Belgaum or Belagavi which is currently part of Karnataka state. The long running border dispute is over the control of Belgaum district and 80 other Marathi-speaking villages since Maharashtra came into being in 1960.

With the tense situation at Karnataka-Maharashtra border, activists from Karnataka were seen stopping vehicles coming from Maharashtra at Hirebagewadi toll in Belagavi. The Kannada activists stopped the goods vehicles at the inter-state border and put state flags on them. Some activists were reported to have damaged some vehicles entering their state from Maharashtra.

#WATCH | Karnataka: Police detain workers of Karnataka Rakshana Vedike, at Hire Bagewadi in Belagavi, after they pelted stones on a truck and stopped trucks which had registration done in Maharashtra. They also staged a sit-in protest. pic.twitter.com/FdNZ6sfdsW
— ANI (@ANI) December 6, 2022

Amid inter-state border row, 11 gram panchayats in Akkalkot taluka of Maharashtra’s Solapur district passed a resolution calling for a merger with Karnataka. However, after a meeting with the BJP’s Akkalkot MLA Sachin Kalyanshetti, the villagers have decided to stay with Maharashtra while two gram panchayats still want to merge with Kannada state.

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