Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj was a Kannadiga’, claims Karnataka Dy CM Govind Karjol

Mangalore Today News Network

Belgavi, Feb 01, 2021:    Govind Karjol, Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka, on January 31, claimed that Maratha king Chhatrapati Shivaji was a ’Kannadiga’. He claimed that the King’s forefather Belliyappa was a Kannadiga from Soratur of Gadag district. His comments came in response to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s statement on the inter-state border row.

 

Speaking to reporters in Belgavi, Karjol said, “Shivaji’s forefather Belliyappa was a Kannadiga from Soratur in Karnataka’s Gadag district. When drought struck Gadag, he [Belliyappa] migrated to Maharashtra, and Shivaji was the fourth generation of his family. Thackeray should at least know this much about Shivaji, who is Shiv Sena’s icon and named the party after.”

Karjol like other Karnataka legislators asserted that raking up the old inter-state border row was an attempt by Thackeray to divert attention from internal bickering in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government, which was formed by Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on November 28, 2019, in Maharashtra.
At a book launch on the border dispute between the two states, in Mumbai on January 27, Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray said areas dominated by Marathi-speaking people in Karnataka like Belagavi, Karwar and Nippani should be declared as the ’Union Territory’ till the Supreme Court gave the final verdict in the decades-old case.

Belagavi, about 500km northwest of Bengaluru was part of the erstwhile Bombay Presidency during the British rule but was given to Mysore state during the reorganisation of the states on linguistic grounds in 1956. Maharashtra then said that there were more Marathi-speaking people living in Belagavi and hundreds of its villages, which was part of Karnataka. The Union government then constituted the Mahajan Commission in 1967 to settle the inter-state boundary dispute.

The Mahajan committee that was set up recommended that 264 villages be transferred to Maharashtra and that Belgaum and 247 villages remain with Karnataka. Maharashtra did not agree with the report, unlike Karnataka. Maharashtra filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Mahajan report and the case is still pending in the top court.

Courtesy:The News Minute