Charging Kerala with preventing Tamil Nadu from plugging the holes drilled in the Mullaperiyar dam, chief minister J. Jayalalithaa has sought Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s immediate intervention to facilitate the work and even warned that Tamil Nadu would be forced to deploy its police force to guard the dam if Kerala’s “recalcitrant” attitude persisted.
“The government of Kerala has been preventing Tamil Nadu officials from closing the holes (drilled to assess the dam’s structural stability), in spite of clear directions given by the empowered committee to close the holes,” the chief minister said. The Tamil Nadu government has also taken up the matter with the government of Kerala “but to no avail”, she pointed out in a letter to the Prime Minister on Sunday.
The Supreme Court-appointed empowered committee, under the chairmanship of Justice A.S. Anand undertook a study of the safety aspects of the Mullaperiyar dam. The committee had ordered a series of tests to assess its structural stability, including the core stability test, for which vertical holes were drilled and the core extracted.
“Now, the holes have to be closed, in view of the approaching monsoon, so as to prevent any damage to the dam,” she explained to the Prime Minister. Kerala’s attempts to prevent Tamil Nadu officials from filling the drilled holes “appears to be a ploy intended to ensure that the structural stability of the dam is weakened...”
Though Kerala gave an undertaking to the Supreme Court that it will provide necessary protection to the dam, in practice, it has been using its police to stop Tamil Nadu engineers from carrying out even routine maintenance work on the dam and its appurtenant structures.