With farmers in the Cauvery basin threatening to begin protests on Tuesday against the release of 10,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu, the state government has convened an urgent meeting with leaders of all political parties to evolve a consensus on the vexed Cauvery water dispute. Official sources said that Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar will meet the leaders on Tuesday, ahead of the September 19 conference of the Cauvery River Authority to be chaired by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. President of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha K.S. Puttanaiah said the government should not buckle under pressure from Tamil Nadu as most districts in the basin were drought-hit. The Sangha blocked traffic on the Bengaluru-Mysore highway on Monday.
TN to get 10,000 cusecs of water
In a goodwill gesture, the Karnataka government today agreed before the Supreme Court to release 10,000 cusecs of water from the river Cauvery to Tamil Nadu till September 20. In the wake of Karnataka's gesture, a bench of justices D K Jain and Madan Lokur refused to pass any order on Tamil Nadu's plea for direction to its neighbouring state to release 2 TMC of water. The bench hoped the Cauvery River Authority (CRA) headed by the Prime Minister would be able to find an "amicable" solution to the river water dispute. The court also disposed of Karnataka's plea, saying if it is kept pending, the authority might not find a solution to the dispute and will be ultimately left to it to decide it.
The bench, however, allowed the state governments to take appropriate steps if the CRA meeting does not take place. The CRA, comprising chief ministers of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala, is scheduled to take place on September 19. The bench, which had earlier pulled up the PMO officials for not fixing a date for the CRA meeting, also took a dig at the Centre whose lawyers were absent during the hearing of the case.
The bench said the CRA should explore the solution and it should not be left for the court to take a decision on the controversial issue. "We expect and hope that the meeting of CRA takes place and some amicable solution to the problem is found," the bench said. The bench, however, clarified that it is only an interim arrangement till September 20.