Amid Calls For Separate North Karnataka, Kumaraswamy Offers To Make Belagavi The Second Capital

A day after activists demanding a separate North Karnataka state unveiled the regional flag in Belagavi, Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy has said that he was in support of the city being made the second capital of the state.

As part of the move, Kumaraswamy has already ordered the shifting of some key government departments to the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha (SVS), the secretariat building in Belagavi, also know as Belgaum.

Kumaraswamy said that he had made the proposal to make Belagavi the second capital of Karnataka back in 2006 when he was the chief minister, but the subsequent governments did not follow through.

¡°The proposal to declare Belagavi the second capital of Karnataka has been pending since I became CM in 2006. However, subsequent governments did not consider it. I will reconsider the proposal and deliberate on the feasibility of the matter,¡± Kumaraswamy said.

BCCL

Currently the SVS functions only during the winter session which the chief minister said will be extended to be round the year.

If approved, Karnataka will become the third state in the country to have two capitals after Jammu and Kashmir which has Jammu as the winter capital and Maharashtra where Nagpur is the winter capital.

Kumaraswamy's offer to reconsider the 2006 proposal is seen as an effort to pacify the ongoing protests in Northern Karnataka by certain group over the alleged snub of the region in the recent budget.

On Tuesday, the protesters led by mutt seers and North Karnataka Horata Samiti had raised the regional flag in Belagavi in front of the SVS.

The Northern Karnataka flag is different from the Karnataka flag which the previous Siddaramaiah government had proposed as the state's official flag.

North Karnataka or Uttara Karnataka refers to areas previously known as Hyderabad-Karnataka and Bombay-Karnataka and has a total of 12 districts which along with Mysore became the state of Karnataka on one unifying factor - Kannada language.

But ever since 2012 when the then UPA government gave special status to Hyderabad Karnataka under Article 371(J) of the Constitution, there has been a growing demand for separate statehood.

The fact that both CM Kumaraswamy and his deputy, G Parameshwara are from Southern Karnataka has also added to the discontent.

While CM accuses the BJP of fueling separatists in the region, many opposition leaders including BS Yeddyurappa has openly distanced themselves from the protests saying that they stand for united Karnataka.