Former Karnataka CMs skip all-party meet, D K Shivakumar defends their absence

Former chief ministers B S Yediyurappa, Basavaraj Bommai and H D Kumaraswamy skipped the all-party meeting called by state government to discuss the Cauvery water crisis on Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters, Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar defended the leaders saying they could not make it as the meeting was convened at short notice. “None of the leaders across any party will do politics in this matter. We will stand as one. Some of them could not attend as they had prior commitments,” he said.

Both Bommai and Kumaraswamy said that they could not attend the meeting owing to pre-scheduled programmes even as they made their stand clear on the issue. 

“The state government should not release water to Tamil Nadu at any cost. The state should represent the ground reality properly before the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) and the Supreme Court,” Bommai said in a statement.

Kumaraswamy alleged that the state government continued to release water without raising the issue of distress formula.

“Does the state government have adequate information on the extent of crops sown in Tamil Nadu, the expansion of irrigated land there?” the former chief minister sought to know, while expressing regret that he couldn’t attend the meeting as he had to participate in a programme in Hassan.