Bhubaneswar: Andhra Pradesh's decision to notify panchayat elections in three villages of the disputed Kotia region in Koraput district has reignited a decades-old border row with Odisha, which says the villages are its own. The dispute is pending before the Supreme Court.
Odisha's Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Suresh Pujari turned the attack on former chief minister Naveen Patnaik, accusing him of trying to cover up past failures instead of blaming the BJP. "The Kotia issue involves 21 villages; it became more complicated because of the neglect of the previous BJD government," Pujari said, adding that he had visited Kotia four times in two years and that development work had begun there.
Earlier, BJD president Naveen Patnaik wrote to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi asking why the Odisha government was silent when Andhra Pradesh issued the poll notification. He suggested the silence flowed from the BJP's dependence on its NDA ally, the Telugu Desam Party. Twenty-one of the 28 villages in the Kotia gram panchayat are claimed by both states.
Pujari dismissed Patnaik's letter as a "pretense" and an attempt to cover up past mistakes, saying the BJD failed to resolve the border dispute during its tenure. Odisha filed a fresh petition in the Supreme Court in January 2022, which remains under consideration, underscoring the legal complexity of a boundary that both states have administered in parts for years.
For residents of the hill villages, the practical stakes are land records, welfare schemes and which government's officials show up at their door. The election notification has sharpened the political temperature in both states, with the ruling parties trading charges over who let the dispute fester. Both governments say they are pursuing a resolution.