Border dispute: Maha ministers' Belagavi visit unlikely

Bengaluru / Mumbai: A Maharashtra ministerial delegation that was supposed to visit Belagavi in Karnataka amid the border row between the two states seemed to have skipped its schedule due to the respective ministers' pre-decided events, even as Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai assured his government was committed to protect the borders and ensure Kannadigas' welfare.

The two ministers, expected to be joined by a member of Parliament, were scheduled to meet activists of the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES) at Belagavi in Karnataka on Tuesday and hold talks with them on the decades-old border issue. MES is an organisation fighting for the merger of Belagavi and some other border areas with the western state.

The development came a day after Karnataka Chief Minister Bommai said he will ask his Maharashtra counterpart Eknath Shinde to not depute his cabinet colleagues--Chandrakant Patil and Shambhuraj Desai, to Belagavi as planned citing law and order, even as prohibitory orders were clamped in the district ahead of the proposed visit of the delegation.

When contacted, a close associate of Chandrakant Patil said, "The minister was in Pune on Monday and he has a number of meetings scheduled in Mumbai on Tuesday. The minister has in his official schedule stated he would attend all the meetings.''