Thaindian News

Mumbai, Dec 29 (IANS) For the second time in three weeks, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan will call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, seeking his intervention in the issues of Indu Mills land and Maharashtra-Karnataka boundary row, an official said here Thursday.

Chavan will meet Manmohan Singh Friday and impress upon him to allot the approximate 12 acres land of Indu Mills at Dadar in Mumbai to the state government free of cost, to enable it construct a magnificent memorial dedicated to B.R. Ambedkar.

Recently, the central government expressed its tentative willingness to give around four acres of the mills’ land, situated in a prime area of south-central Mumbai, for the proposed Ambedkar memorial. All Dalit parties, however, rejected teh offer, demnanding the entire piece of land.

However, Chavan then moved a resolution in the state legislature Dec 20, demanding that the entire Indu Mill land, currently owned by the National Textiles Corporation (NTC), be handed over free of cost for developing the Ambedkar memorial.

Incidentally, the NTC had moved the Bombay High Court seeking eviction of some Dalit party activists who have ‘captured’ and are squatting in the mill premises since Dec 6.

The second issue Chavan will discuss with the prime minister is the recent dismissal of the civic body of Belgaum in Karnataka, bordering this state, ostensibly as it was dominated by Marathi-speaking representatives.

Chavan plans to urge Manmohan Singh to declare Belgaum and other Marathi-speaking areas of Karnataka as a ‘union territory’ until the outcome of a pending litigation in the Supreme Court.

On this issue too, a resolution moved by Chavan was unanimously adopted by the Maharashtra assembly Dec 16, demanding that the disputed border areas be declared a union territory.