Lets forget about the division for a moment, Rest of Karnataka has least connectivity to Mangalore. This needs to be addressed first. Also in the past we have seen issues like, tickets printed in english, hindi and malayalam. Completely ignored kannada, and also railway officials were mostly from other states and localites/kannadigas were left out. To save the localites, separation of MAQ from SR raised but never addressed. Not to hurt anyone's sentiments, but under SR, karnataka's Rail infra never developed compared to other states. Such a big state and rail infra is still not the best which resulted in SWR creation. Now MAQ, is only serving Kerala and probably most revenue to pallakad division is coming from MAQ[ not sure], which may also be a reason that SR is against losing MAQ to SWR.