Emotive language issue fades out in Belagavi as Maratha votes are key in the border district

Karnataka Assembly elections 2023 | Emotive language issue fades out in Belagavi as Maratha votes are key in the border district

Earlier this month, the Maharashtra government announced the inclusion of 865 border villages of Karnataka in the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule health scheme. Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shindhe said it would benefit both Marathi and Kannada speakers in these Karnataka villages. However, three days later, when the Maharashtra government released the application form for the scheme, it made the applicants testify that they were Marathi speakers from Karnataka.

Kannada organisations called it a “clandestine attempt” by Maharashtra to collect evidence for its claim that a large number of Marathi speakers reside in Belagavi and other border districts.

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai spoke against the move and threatened that if Maharashtra did not stop it, Karnataka would be constrained to extend benefits of its social security schemes to Kannada speakers in Maharashtra.

At that point, it seemed as if the language issue would be the primal focus of the Assembly election in these parts. But now, language seems to have faded into oblivion even for a language-centric party like Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES), and other outfits.

“A simple reason is that all national parties want Maratha votes. No political leader from Belagavi is concerned about the identity issue,” said Srinivas Talukar, a Kannada activist fighting polls as the JD(S) candidate from Belagavi South.

Rajkumar Kamble, Kannada Horata Samiti leader, points to the attempts by MLAs such as Lakshmi Hebbalkar (Congress) and Ramesh Jarkiholi (BJP) to claim credit for unveiling the Chatrapati Shivaji statue at Rajhamsgad fort in Yallur village in Belagavi rural constituency.

While Ms. Hebbalkar claimed it was a personal achievement, Mr. Jarkiholi argued it was a government project. In the end, the statue was inaugurated twice in a week, underlining how the leaders are competing to show that they are more pro-Maratha than others. Mr. Kamble accused politicians of trying to appease the Marathi vote bank.