Basavaraj Bommai on Maharashtra’s Ajit Pawar’ border row comment: ‘Rock bottom’

A day after Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar brought up the issue of Karnataka border row, the chief minister of the neighbouring state hit back, implying that the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government was making such remarks for the sake of “political survival”.

“Whenever there’s a political crisis in Maharashtra, and it’s there now, the entire government hits rock bottom. They have created this language bogey now, just to survive politically,” Basavaraj Bommai was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Speaking at an event to mark the Maharashtra day, Ajit Pawar on Sunday had said: “While we are celebrating 62 years of formation of Maharashtra, we regret that the Marathi-speaking villages in Bidar, Bhalki, Belgaum, Karwar, Nippani and other places in Karnataka could not be merged with Maharashtra. The citizens of Maharashtra and its government are with their fight to be part of Maharashtra. I assure you we would keep supporting their fight till these villages become part of Maharashtra.”

His comments triggered a fresh controversy over the decades-old border row with the neighbouring southern state. Maharashtra claims that some border areas have a majority of Marathi-speaking population and hence they should be a part of the state.

“The border issue is very clear, we stand firmly by our decisions and they also know it. I strongly urge the politicians of Maharashtra not to use this language bogey in their political acts,” the Karnataka chief minister said on Monday.

He was referring to the multiple controversies in the state of Maharashtra with the most recent ones being MNS chief Raj Thackeray’s comment on the use of loudspeakers at the religious places and the Hanuman chalisa row linked to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.

Karnataka too, however, has dealt with its share of political controversies over the Hijab row among others.

(With inputs from ANI)