After a brief lull, the governments of Karnataka and Maharashtra are locking horns once again over the status of Belagavi, previously called Belgaum, which lies along the interstate border.
The two states are set to take their decades-long battle for Belagavi to court soon.
Earlier this week, the Maharashtra government appointed two Ministers to coordinate with the legal team regarding the case set to come up in the Supreme Court.
Karnataka has also deployed a battery of lawyers, including Mukul Rohatgi and Shyam Diwan, to fight its case.
The two sides are also engaged in a war of words, with Maharashtra claiming to take back Belagavi while Karnataka wants areas like Solapur and Akkalkot to become a part of the state.
¡°No village in Maharashtra will go to Karnataka! The state government will fight strongly in the Supreme Court to get Marathi speaking villages in Karnataka, including Belgaum-Karwar-Nipani," Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said in response to Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.
The dispute goes back to the 1960s after the reorganisation of States on linguistic lines.
Maharashtra laid claim on the Belagavi part of the Bombay Presidency at the time of independence on linguistic grounds.
Belagavi bordering Maharashtra has a significant Marathi-speaking population and has been a bone of contention for decades between the two states.
Karnataka repeatedly maintained that the Mahajan Commission report on the border issue is final, and "there is no question of letting go even an inch of Karnataka's border".
Belagavi has also seen systematic violence and flare-ups over linguistic differences.
On Thursday, a group of activists allegedly from a pro-Marathi outfit in Pune painted Karnataka state-owned buses with slogans such as "Jai Maharashtra'' in black ink and raised slogans against Bommai.
Reacting to the incidents of painting buses, the Chief Minister said, "If somebody is doing it, I condemn it and I urge the Maharashtra government to take immediate action and stop this."
"It will create a divide among the States. Therefore, the Maharashtra government should act swiftly, I especially urge the Deputy Chief Minister, the Home Minister of the state to take immediate action," he said.
In the past, too, there have been sporadic violence and tensions in the area.
In December 2021, there were?widespread clashes between Kannada and Marathi groups?in Belagavi and statues of leaders from both sides were vandalised.
In August 2018, the then Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy had said that he supported the city being made the state's second capital to pacify the protests in Northern Karnataka.
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