Amid the raging border dispute between Maharashtra and Karnataka, Nationalist Congress Party chief Jayant Patil has said that Maharashtra should raise the height of its upstream reservoirs to “crush” the neighboring state. The issue of the decades-old limits came up in both state legislatures on Tuesday.
Speaking in the Maharashtra Assembly on Tuesday, Patil said Karnataka was deliberately persecuting Marathi-speaking people in its border areas.
“We should respond to what the Chief Minister of Karnataka says in the same language. If they have so much attitude, we will raise the height of the Koyna and Warna river dams and all the dams in Satara and Kolhapur districts. They (Karnataka leaders) would not have been brought under control otherwise,” said the former Maharashtra water resources minister.
“If Karnataka holds us to the rescue, then we have water,” he added.
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The border issue dates back to 1957, after the states were reorganized along linguistic lines.
Maharashtra claimed Belagavi, which was part of the erstwhile Bombay Presidency, as it has a large Marathi-speaking population. He also claimed more than 800 Marathi-speaking villages that are now part of Karnataka.
Karnataka permanently maintains the delimitation on linguistic lines under the States Reorganization Act and the Mahajan Commission Report of 1967.