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Promote Marathi in border areas: Shinde govt rolls out scheme as row with Karnataka rages on

Maharashtra govt to give grants of up to Rs 10 lakh to organisations in Maharashtra-Karnataka border areas for projects including speeches & exhibitions aimed at conserving the language.

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Mumbai: At a time of heightened tensions between Maharashtra and Karnataka over a decades-old border conflict, the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government has formally rolled out a scheme to provide financial aid to organisations working towards conserving the Marathi language along the border shared by the two states.

The Shinde government had formulated the scheme in June, but the state Marathi language department officially rolled it out only last month, according to a 30 November government resolution accessed by ThePrint.

A department official who did not wish to be named told ThePrint that the idea was to just ensure that “the Marathi language and literature are not just conserved, but also flourish in the border areas where there are influences of both Marathi and Kannada”.

Deepak Kesarkar, a cabinet minister from the Shinde-led Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena who helms the Marathi language department, did not respond to ThePrint’s calls and text messages.

The new scheme is significant as it comes at a time when the governments of Maharashtra and Karnataka have been sparring over their six-decade-old territorial war, causing fresh flare-ups at the border. 

Ever since states were reorganised in the 1950s, Maharashtra has had a long-standing demand for 814 villages along its border and Belagavi city — areas in Karnataka that have a large Marathi-speaking population — to be included in its territory. 

The conflict has become a political hot potato, not just between the BJP government in Karnataka and the BJP-Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra, but also within Maharashtra, with opposition alliance Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) using the issue to target the ruling coalition. 

The MVA comprises the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and the Congress.


Also Read: As Maharashtra’s alliances spar over border row with Karnataka, BJP & Congress walk tightrope


Scheme to promote Marathi 

According to the government resolution (GR), the state government will give financial grants of up to Rs 10 lakh to organisations in the Maharashtra-Karnataka border areas for taking up projects to promote Marathi.

This includes organising speeches of Marathi writers, philosophers, storytellers, or poets in border areas, holding exhibitions to make Marathi books available at a subsidised cost, and even helping in the publishing and distribution of Marathi books on a no-profit, no-loss basis.

Marathi newspapers and other publications operating from the border towns and villages will also be eligible for a grant, according to the GR.

Similarly, the state government will also grant financial aid for activities to popularise and preserve Devanagari, the script used for Marathi.

“Through this scheme, the government also wants to promote a lot of Marathi literature festivals for the youth and children in the border areas. Institutions holding Marathi language competitions for students such as essay writing, debates, theatre, etc. will also be considered for aid,” the official quoted earlier told ThePrint.

Shinde government’s overtures to border areas 

The scheme to extend financial grants for organisations promoting Marathi in border areas is among a string of decisions that the Shinde government has taken amid the conflict, which reignited the tussle at the state borders.

Last month, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde extended a pension scheme for freedom fighters to beneficiaries in the disputed border areas. 

He also said he will take steps to extend the Mahatma Phule Jan Arogya Yojana — the Maharashtra government’s flagship health insurance scheme — to the disputed areas. 

Last month, he rejigged a high-power committee on the border conflict and made himself its chairman. Around the same time, he appointed cabinet ministers Chandrakant Patil and Shambhuraj Desai to oversee Maharashtra’s legal fight over the issue in the Supreme Court.

On Sunday, the Shinde-led cabinet approved a Rs 2,000-crore scheme to expand the Mhaisal lift irrigation scheme to 48 parched villages of Sangli’s Jat taluka. 

Currently part of Maharashtra, these 48 villages had been intermittently making demands of merging with Karnataka for the past decade over not getting adequate water.

Speaking on the first day of the winter session of the state legislature, Shinde said: “The previous government (Thackeray-led MVA) stopped many schemes in the border areas, (but) we have started them again. But, I don’t want to politicise this issue.”

(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)


Also Read: BJP vs BJP Maharashtra-Karnataka border row has its roots in Sena vs Sena feud. Here’s how


 

 

 

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