The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to entertain a plea by the Maharashtra Government for a direction to the Centre to impose President’s Rule in Belgaum district of Karnataka until the border dispute between the two states was resolved.“How can we pass such an order? We cannot give any such direction,” a Bench of Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan and Justices Arijit Pasayat and S H Kapadia told counsel Vasant Bhandare appearing for the Maharashtra Government.The plea for President’s Rule was made on grounds that the Marathi-speaking people in Belgaum were being subjected to harassment and victimisation by the Karnataka Government. The alleged victimisation reportedly intensified after the local Belgaum panchayat passed a resolution seeking the district’s merger with Maharashtra.The Maharashtra Government had filed a suit in 2004 in the apex court for restoring to it Marathi-speaking areas of Belgaum, Bahalki, Khanapur, Nippani and Karwar and surrounding villages.Bhandare told the Bench that Kannada Rakshaka Vedike activists had assaulted Belgaum’s Marathi-speaking Mayor Vijaya Pandurang More and his followers in November 2005 and blackened their faces as they passed the resolution in support of the district’s merger with Maharashtra. On November 17, the Centre had told the Supreme Court that resolution of boundary disputes between the states on linguistic criteria would create several practical problems and favoured settling the long pending row between the states through mutual negotiations.
