Constitution has no provision to make Belagavi second capital

BENGALURU: Did chief minister HD Kumaraswamy jump the gun by promising to make Belagavi the second capital of the state? It appears so.
To silence vociferous calls for separate statehood for North Karnataka, Kumaraswamy, in August, had promised to make Belagavi the second capital. Four months on, the chief minister is yet to put a seal on the move. Reason: Officials and legal experts have advised him that there is no provision in the
Constitution to make Belagavi the second capital.
The chief minister has been under intense pressure from MLAs and ministers from North Karnataka to issue a notification formalising the move on the second capital. For this, cabinet approval is required.
“The CM recently met a team of legal experts and law department officials to seek their opinion,” said HB Dinesh, Kumaraswamy’s media secretary. “They reportedly said there was no provision in the law to officially grant such status. Therefore the state government has decided not to pass a bill or issue a notification to this effect. It will only make a formal declaration on the floor of the House in the forthcoming winter session.”
Endorsing this, revenue minister RV Deshpande, who heads the cabinet sub-committee to identify and recommend offices to be shifted to Belagavi from Bengaluru, said the government is committed to ensuring the secretariat in Belagavi becomes fully functional.
“We believe it is now imperative to make good on our overdue promise by shifting some major departments to Suvarana Vidhana Soudha (SVS), the secretariat building in Belagavi,” Desphande said.
Belagavi as the second capital is a long-pending demand of the people of the region as they believe it would settle the border row with Maharashtra. In 2006, the Karnataka assembly under the JD(S)-BJP regime headed by Kumaraswamy had adopted a unanimous resolution to grant Belagavi second-capital status. Although not in law, Jammu and Kashmir has two capitals with Jammu the winter capital and Srinagar the summer capital. Similarly, Maharashtra has Mumbai and Nagpur as capitals.
After the resolution, the government began building the SVS, spending more than Rs 450 crore. But the SVS has turned into a white elephant as it is now used only for 10 days for the winter session.
Besides making Belagavi the second capital, Kumaraswamy had also promised in August to shift some government departments to SVS. “I intend to keep SVS active all 365 days of the year and to ensure people from Kalaburagi, Belagavi and Hubballi-Dharwad do not come to Bengaluru for every small issue,” Kumaraswamy had said.