Cauvery issue: Karunanidhi criticises Jaya's remarks

Assuring his party MPs had taken up the issue of notification of final award of Cauvery Tribunal with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during their meeting with him recently, DMK president M Karunanidhi today said criticism by his archrival and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on the issue amounts to casting aspersions on the PMO.

Charging DMK with inaction in getting the award notified in the Central gazette while in power in Centre and state, Jayalalithaa had said yesterday that people were suspicious if the DMK MPs had orally demanded that the final order should not be notified.

"This (Jayalalithaa's remarks) amounts to casting aspersion on not only the DMK MPs but also on the Prime Minister's Office," Karunanidhi said in a letter to partymen.
Following his statement to the press on December 12 demanding that the final award be notified, he said DMK Parliamentary Party Leader T R Baalu had led a delegation of MPs to meet the Prime Minister to take up the matter.

"Immediately they met the Prime Minister who had assured to look into the matter. This had appeared in all newspapers on December 18, 2012. But in her own style, Jayalalithaa had made wrong allegations about this," he said.

Jayalalithaa had yesterday said that if the DMK MPs had indeed sought notifying the Cauvery Tribunal order, it must have been given in writing and Karunanidhi should have released that to the media which had not been done, saying this made it clear there was no written representation.

"With Karunanidhi, whose party has been in power in the Centre and state for four years not insisting his MPs to meet the Prime Minister all the time, and the fact that AIADMK MPs have not been allotted time with the Prime Minister to discuss the issue.... seeing this now there is a strong suspicion in the minds of people if the DMK MPs had orally demanded that the final order should not be notified," she had said.