Mumbai, July 13: The Maharashtra Chief Minister, Mr Ashok Chavan, on Tuesday demanded that the disputed district of Belgaum be made a Union Territory until the border dispute between Maharashtra and Karnataka is resolved.
Mr Chavan made the demand while replying to a discussion held in the Legislative Council on the border dispute.
The Shiv Sena executive president, Mr Uddhav Thackeray, was the first political leader to demand Union Territory status for the disputed 865 villages.
The Shiv Sena MLC, Mr Deepak Sawant, had appealed to the Chief Minister to take up this demand during the all-party delegation’s meeting with the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, on Wednesday.
Mr Chavan also approved of the Sena’s demand.
Central forces should be posted in the area, he said. Maharashtra has laid claim to the 865 villages in the district stating that they are dominated by Marathi-speaking people.
The long-pending dispute between the two states got revived after the Centre’s affidavit in the Supreme Court last week that the areas sought by
Maharashtra could not become part of it just because most of the people there spoke Marathi.