Chavan meets PM over Belgaum dispute

Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan today met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and handed over a memorandum demanding that 865 Marathi speaking villages on the Karnataka Maharashtra border be granted union territory status till the Supreme Court verdict on the issue.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan Wednesday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and handed over a memorandum demanding that 865 Marathi speaking villages on the Karnataka Maharashtra border be granted union territory status till the Supreme Court verdict on the issue.

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After meeting Manmohan Singh, Chavan told reporters that the prime minister would hand over the memorandum to the home ministry.

He said in the memorandum that the Kannada language should not be imposed on the Marathi speaking people in Belgaum and the interests of the Marathis in the area should be protected.

Chavan had charged the Karnataka government with changing the names of the villages in the disputed areas and discriminating against the Marathi speaking people there.

The Maharashtra Karnataka boundary row suddenly came to the limelight following the central government's affidavit in the Supreme Court last week that the disputed areas could not be made part of Maharashtra merely because a majority of the population there speak Marathi.

The central government's affidavit sparked a row in Maharashtra with loud protests by all political parties of the ruling as well as opposition combines.