Karnataka bandh on December 31 may roil business on New Year's eve

Pro-Kannada outfits have called for a state-wide bandh in Karnataka on December 1, Friday, to press for a ban on Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES), a political outfit active in the border district of Belagavi.

Their ire is directed at MES as they have alleged MES activists have been behind the defacing of the statue of Sangolli Rayanna, the freedom fighter who hailed from the region, in Belagavi, last week.

This happened around the same time as some miscreants defacing Maratha hero Shivaji’s statue in Bengaluru. Karnataka’s minister’s condemned both incidents and hailed both personalities as national heroes.


Leaders of pro-Kannada outfits Sa Ra Govindu and Vatal Nagaraj, also a former MLA, held a meeting with other Kannada organisations on Wednesday and set a deadline of December 29 to the state government to ban MES.

Otherwise, they will go ahead with the bandh call on December 31 for which more than 35 Kannada organisations have extended support, they said.

The decision of the Kannada outfits threatens to roil the New Year eve celebrations in Bengaluru and other parts of Karnataka as pubs, bars and restaurants are already under a spate of Covid-19 restrictions and hope to recoup some of the past losses from the business on the New Year eve.

Business outlets are also planning a series of year-end mega sales, and a bandh would upend all this.

In Belagavi, State’s Revenue Minister R Ashoka appealed to Kannada outfits to drop their bandh plans as registration of political parties are dealt with by a separate law. The state government, for its part, has acted on the miscreants, he added.

MES has been politically active in Belagavi district, which is a vast region. It contests all elections and is dominant in local bodies. The outfit always claimed that Belagavi is part of Maharashtra and hence should be merged with the western state.

In New Delhi, Union Coal & Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi also said MES was a registered political party, and any demand to act on it has to be examined under the purview of the law.

On Tuesday, chief minister Basavaraj Bommai announced on the floor of the Assembly in Belagavi that the government would install the busts of both Rayanna and Kitturu Rani Chennamma, another freedom fighter from the region, at prominent spots at the Suvarna Soudha in Belagavi.

The government holds a winter session of the Legislature at Suvarna Soudha in Belagavi to assert the state’s authority in the region.