In continuance of my all India media coverage of Belgaum during the Assembly session, here are some interesting points.

The national media is not covering the assembly as it yet to start, its giving great importance to the other issues like MES maha Mellava. Yesterday I had posted news bites from PTI; see a part from Bangalore Mirror.

The Karnataka-Maharashtra boundary row could whip up passions yet again. The day: Friday. The place: Belgaum. For, the state government will hold its winter session of legislature in the border district.

The same day, the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES) plans to hold the Marathi Mahamellav. The MES (splinter group) is staging the rally in protest against Karnataka holding its winter session in Belgaum.

Sonia Narang, SP, said, “We have not granted permission to the MES. In 2006, permission had been granted and things had gone worse. This time, we don’t want to take risks. It is left to the government to allow them to hold the rally or not. We have taken all security measures.”

A meeting of the Marathas will be held at Lele Grounds, Tilakwadi on Jan 16 in Belgaum.

The MES has split due to the denial of tickets in the recent Assembly polls. One of the MES factions is led by Kiran Thakur, editor of Marathi newspaper ‘Tarun Bharat’. Its members are: Vijay More and Shivaji Sunthkar, former Belgaum mayors; B I Patil, former MLA; and Kiran Saynak, T K Patil and Narayan Kitwadkar, all corporators.The other faction is led by former Maharashtra minister Prof N D Patil. He has the backing of Manohar Kinyekar, Narayanrao Tarale, Digambar Patil and Vasantrao Patil, all former MLAs; Maloji Ashtekar, former Belgaum mayor; and Deepak Dalvi, a senior MES leader.

Source: Bangalore Mirror

Media Coverage: Continued…

All the news media have taken into context the PTI news bite and added their own reports to it.

See this on from Outlookindia – http://news.outlookindia.com/item.aspx?651718

One more on the same lines from Zeenews –http://www.zeenews.com/states/2009-01-14/498784news.html