The Maharashtra government and its different activists continue to needle and provoke the Karnataka government with their interventions that propagate the neighbouring state’s ambitions on snatching 865 Karnataka villages of border district.

The latest provocation, according to Kannada activists in the border town of Belagavi, the town where language issue flared up with violent attacks on Karnataka road transport corporation employees for not speaking Marathi in the bus travelling within Karnataka.

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In fact, that attack sparked off violence in both Karnataka and Maharashtra with both the states suspending bus services for few days in February.

After a round of meetings between ministers of the two states, the issue was resolved, and bus services resumed, but tensions persist between the two states on the issue of language, and also claims and counterclaims on 865 villages that Maharashtra claims as its own.

Incidentally, in these villages, the Marathi speaking population is in majority as well, and the people are largely bilingual too.

The latest provocation from the Maharashtra side is that the Maharashtra state government has expanded its Phule Public Health Scheme to residents of 865-Marathi speaking villages in Karnataka border region, and there are times when the beneficiaries receive the financial help through cheques distributed from the official of the Maharashtra Chief Minister.

The disputed villages fall in five districts of Belagavi, Karwar, Kalburgi, and Bidar covering 12 Taluks and 865 villages.

The Maharashtra government has also reserved jobs for the residents of these villages, and many villagers from here have been promised jobs in Maharashtra, said Ashok Chandaragi, President, Working Committee, Belagavi District Kannada Organisation.

He told The Statesman over phone from Belagavi on Saturday that, Maharashtra government never stops interfering in the border districts and he lamented that all his pleas to the Karnataka government fell on deaf ears.

Incidentally, today, Saturday, the Kannada activists are observing a state-wide bandh and one of their objectives is to highlight the tension being created in the border areas from across by the Maharashtra government, through its different bodies and activists.