Fresh plea in SC on border row

Mrashtra says people in disputed area denied fundamental rights

“The Union Of India has to ensure fair play under of our federal Constitution to ensure harmony among various constituent states and their inhabitants,’’ said the petition.

“The inhabitants of the disputed area are being denied their fundamental right to live with dignity, without fear or oppression and the right to educate their children in their own language,’’ said the petition demanding merger of 814 villages of Belgaum, Karwar, Bidar and Gulberga districts of Karnataka.

Constitutional validity

Maharashtra has challenged the Constitutional validity of certain provisions of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, and the Bombay Reorganisation Act, 1960, as an arbitrary and unreasonable exercise of power by Parliament under Article 3 of the Constitution.

The transfer of disputed areas to Karnataka is contrary to the fundamental principles governing the exercise of power under Article 3,  Maharashtra argued. “The fundamental premise underlying Article 3 is the linguistic and cultural homogeneity and the wishes of the people of the area which is affected by reorganisation.

Historically, since before independence, provinces were created on a linguistic basis on the wishes of the people of the affected area. “It is for this reason that linguistic and cultural homogeneity has been uniformly and consistently adopted as the basic principles for reorganisation of states under the Article 3 as long it is not in conflict with other factors such as national unity and security, geographical contiguity and economic and administrative convenience,’’ said the petition which will come up for hearing this month. 

However, the linguistic homogeneity principle and other factors were not followed by the State Reorganisation Commission while creating Maharashtra and Karnataka, the petition alleged.

In the original suit filed in 2004, Mahrashtra claimed its jurisdiction over 814 villages, which reportedly had majority Marathi-speaking people. In the process of establishment of Karnataka under the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, by joining state of Mysore and parts of Bombay, Hyderabad, Madras and Coorg, the Union government had merged certain Marathi-speaking majority areas, said the suit.