New Delhi, Feb. 18: Five years after a failed bid to reclaim Belgaum from Karnataka, the Maharashtra government has challenged the Nehru-era States’ Reorganisation Act that redrew the country’s map based on linguistic majority.

While the Congress-ruled state moved the Supreme Court, a delegation of Maharashtra leaders set aside political differences and met home minister P. Chidambaram to press for central rule in the district till the dispute was resolved.

Chief minister Ashok Chavan, who led the delegation that included the Shiv Sena’s Manohar Joshi and BJP leader Prakash Javdekar, said Karnataka should not be allowed to change the name of Belgaum to Belgavi.

The Maharashtra government’s February 12 petition challenged the “constitutional validity” of Sections 7(1) (b) & (c) and 8(1) of the States’ Reorganisation Act, 1956, and Section 3 (1) of the Bombay Reorganisation Act, 1960, which defined the boundaries of Maharashtra and Karnataka.

The petition came five years after the then Sushil Shinde government moved the Supreme Court in March 2004, questioning the location of Belgaum in Karnataka.

Maharashtra, which has also staked claim to Karwar, Nippani and Khanapur, said the “transfer of the disputed areas to Karnataka” was “contrary to the fundamental principles governing the exercise of power under Article 3”.

The article deals with linguistic and cultural homogeneity and wishes of people of an area affected by reorganisation. The state government said even before Independence, provinces had been created on linguistic basis, deferring to the wishes of people of the affected areas.

“It is for this reason that linguistic and cultural homogeneity has been uniformly and consistently adopted as the basic principle of reorganisation of states under Article 3 as long as it was not in conflict with other factors such as national unity and security, geographical contiguity and economic and administrative convenience.”

Maharashtra says if language was the basis of reorganisation, all Marathi-speaking areas should have come to Maharashtra. A promise that the finer points of a broad division of linguistically contiguous areas would be worked out later didn’t materialise.

Now, it wants a comprehensive exercise going right down to the village level to ensure that not even a single Marathi-speaking village is left behind in Karnataka.

The state urged the court to direct the Centre to amend the law to remove grievances of any state or people with “linguistic and cultural affinities to a state”, and “erroneously” forced to live in another by wrong demarcation of boundaries.

“The inhabitants of the disputed area are being denied their fundamental right to live with dignity, without fear or oppression and the right to educate their children in their own language,” it said.

A bench, headed by the Chief Justice, issued notices to the Centre and the Karnataka government on the petition.

At the meeting with Chidambaram, the home minister is understood to have told the delegation “we are one nation, one people” and the issue should be amicably resolved.