The Maharashtra government on Tuesday sought an early hearing in the Supreme Court on its 2004 lawsuit concerning its long-standing border dispute with Karnataka over 865 villages and towns with significant Marathi-speaking populations that are currently administered by the neighbouring state.

The dispute, which has remained unresolved for decades, centres on areas including Belagavi, Karwar and Nipani. Maharashtra has maintained that several Marathi-speaking areas were wrongly included in Karnataka following the reorganisation of states along linguistic lines.