New Delhi, (DHNS): The Supreme Court on Monday said it would consider whether Maharashtra can challenge transfer of Belgaum, now renamed Belagavi, to Karnataka in 1956 by filing of a suit in 2004.

“The issue of maintainability of a suit and the limitation (bar) have to be decided,” a three-judge bench presided over by Justice Dipak Misra said.

“Could an original suit be filed after 48 years of re-organisation of the states?” the bench, also comprising Justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan, asked senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, representing Maharashtra.

The court put the matter for consideration on October 10 as Karnataka's counsel senior advocate P P Rao was indisposed.

Ramachandran, in his brief submission, said the state was ready to argue over the question if the constitutional validity of Parliament enactment can be challenged by an original suit filed under Article 131 (original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in disputes between Centre and one or more states or between states) of the Constitution.

Maharashtra made its claims over Belagavi in view of the presence of a large presence of Marathi-speaking people there.

Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, appearing for the Centre, also questioned the maintainability of the suit. He said a similar issue had earlier arisen between Bihar and Jharkhand, where the two-judge bench had made a reference to a three-judge bench.

In its written submission made by Additional Advocate General Devdutt Kamat, Karnataka has maintained that under Article 3 of the Constitution, only the Union government has been entrusted with the power to reorganise, alter or diminish areas of the states. This cannot be questioned by the states, it said.

“The exercise of Parliament under Article 3 which is a complex political exercise cannot be weighed in the scale of judicial review to ascertain whether such exercise is favourable to some state and to the detriment of the other. It is submitted that any such question would lead to an analysis of comparative merits and demerits of reorganisation and would not be covered by judicially manageable standards,” it said.

Karnataka also maintained that the view that linguistic considerations can be the sole basis for reorganisation has been severely doubted and not followed historically as well.

The apex court had on December 13, 2012 framed a preliminary issue whether the suit, challenging the provisions of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956 and Bombay Reorganisation Act, 1960, under Articles 14 (equality) and 29 (protection of interest of minorities) of the Constitution, is not maintainable in view of Article 3 of the Constitution.