MES blames leaders for border impasse

KOLHAPUR, Sept 29: The Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti — an organisation wedded to the cause of merging Belgaum and other disputed border area of Karnataka with Maharashtra — leader Kiran Thakur has squarely blamed politicians for lacking the will to decide the contentious issue.

No government at the Centre ever tried to resolve the four-decade-old border dispute, he recently told Yeshwantrao Chavan Open University’s students of journalism here. The bahujan samaj in the disputed border areas has been the worst affected and the situation has been aggravated by compulsion of Kannada language, Thakur said. Few afford to migrate to Mumbai or Pune to find their livelihood. The problem has been severe for the uneducated or undergraduates not knowing Kannada, Thakur said.

Geographical continuity and people’s aspirations were the basics of linguistic states, Thakur said adding these, however, were blatantly ignored for the people of disputed border areas.