The issue of unplugged holes of Mullaperiyar dam, which was threatening to once again cause a rift between Tamil Nadu and Kerala, was resolved smoothly Saturday with a concerned Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa intervening.
The chief minister reviewed the situation on Friday and personally instructed the chief secretary and state police chief to act on a war-footing by immediately writing to their Kerala counterparts About 500 bags of cement were despatched to the dam Saturday morning and the hole plugging works resumed after the TN chief secretary and DGP got in touch with their Kerala counterparts.
As on date, only two of the six vertical holes, each measuring between 130 and 180 feet in depth, drilled to assess the dam’s structural stability, remain unfilled.
This is the second instance wherein Ms Jayalalithaa pitched in to resolve the matter. On May 27, she had written to the PM, seeking to instruct the Kerala government to stop preventing TN public works department officials from going to the dam to do the works.
She even cautioned that she was not averse to deploying TN police at the dam site if Kerala continued to prevent TN engineers from doing their duty.
Twice since mid-April, Kerala officials prevented TN engineers and workers from proceeding to the dam to do the filling.
The Kerala officials were objecting to the use of concrete pressure grouting to fill the holes, which, according to TN PWD experts, was the technically safe method to fill the holes.
TN engineers blame their Kerala counterparts of playing into the hands of their politicians despite knowing that pressure grouting was the commonly accepted method for such works.