Not possible to release water, CM tells Tamil Nadu team

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has convened a meeting of floor leaders of the two Houses of the legislature on August 27 to discuss Tamil Nadu’s plea in the Supreme Court, seeking release of Cauvery water.

Karnataka has already expressed its inability to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu as specified in the final order of the tribunal due to deficient rainfall and low reservoir levels in the Cauvery basin.  

However, Tamil Nadu recently filed a petition before the Supreme Court, seeking a direction to Karnataka to release 50 tmc ft of water.
Union ministers from the state and district incharge ministers of regions under the Cauvery basin have been invited for the meeting.

A delegation of farmers from Tamil Nadu on Thursday met Siddaramaiah at his official residence here and requested him to release Cauvery water to help farmers save their samba paddy crop. The crop is normally grown on over nine lakh acres in the core delta districts of Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam.

Siddaramaiah told them that Karnataka was facing a distress year. The total capacity of the reservoirs in the Cauvery basin is 114 tmc ft, but the availability is only 52 tmc ft. The state required 40 tmc ft to meet the drinking water needs of Bengaluru alone. “You want water for irrigation, but we do not have sufficient water even for drinking purposes,” Siddaramaiah said.

The depleted storage in the four reservoirs in the Cauvery basin — KRS, Kabini, Harangi and Hemavathi — had put the state in a position that it would not even be able to abide by the distress formula, he said. Good rains in the coming days were the only solution to the present crisis, the chief minister said. Water will be released if it rains well in the coming days.

The delegation comprised former MP K P Ramalingam, Tamil Nadu Farmers’ Association president K Chellamuthu, among others. Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha president Kodihalli Chandrashekar accompanied the team during the meeting with the chief minister.

Senior counsel Fali S Nariman, who heads the state’s legal team, called up Siddaramaiah and enquired about the progress of the state’s response to Tamil Nadu’s petition in the apex court. Siddaramaiah said he will meet Nariman soon.
DH News Service

‘Stop water release or give farmers Rs 500 cr’
The JD(S) district unit, led by former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy, staged a protest on Thursday against the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, reports DHNS from Mandya.

Kumaraswamy demanded that the government should either stop the release of water or announce a compensation of Rs 500 crore to the affected farmers in the region.

The protesters put forth various demands, including the reopening of MySugar factory. They blocked the Mysuru-Bengaluru highway, disrupting traffic for a while.