CHENNAI: Karnataka’s dream dam across River Cauvery at Mekedatu suddenly took the centre stage of Tamil Nadu’s political narrative on Saturday with DMK president M K Stalin calling for an all-party meeting to oppose it and TNCC president Manickam Tagore condemning his own party colleague and Karnataka Chief Minister D K Shivakumar for pushing for the controversial project and also accusing the Union BJP Government of blatant bias.
Stalin wrote a letter to Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay, asking him to call for an all-party meeting to discuss the issue in the backdrop of Shivakumar’s statement that no one could stop Karnataka from building the dam at Mekedatu. He said River Cauvery River was deeply and emotionally intertwined with the lives of Tamils and the livelihoods of delta farmers and that the State government should not remain silent.
Calling for unity among the parties in Tamil Nadu in opposing the dam, Stalin pointed out that political parties in Karnataka spoke with a single voice on the Cauvery issue. The resolutions passed in the proposed all-party meeting, along with the anti-Mekedatu resolution passed by the Assembly in June, should be presented to the Prime Minister by a joint delegation of legislative party leaders and MPs.
Stalin also reiterated Tamil Nadu’s consistent policy to reject bilateral negotiations with Karnataka over Cauvery water rights and instead protect the state’s interests through legal means.
Tagore, in a message on his X page, said Shivakumar seeking necessary clearances for the dam at a meeting in Mysuru, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, went against the Supreme Court ruling and the Cauvery tribunal’s final order.
Urging Vijay to remain vigilant and intensify legal measures to prevent the construction of the dam, Tagore said construction of the dam would turn the Cauvery delta into a desert and that the Congress in Tamil Nadu would not allow the dam to come up at any cost.
Referring to Shivakumar’s claim that the Supreme Court has ruled in favour of Karnataka on the construction of the Mekedatu dam, Tagore said Tamil Nadu had already approached the Supreme Court on the inter-state dispute and Shivkumar’s remarks undermined Tamil Nadu’s interests and violated the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal and Supreme Court verdicts secured after a 50-year struggle.
The TNCC chief said that as per the rulings of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal and the Supreme Court, Tamil Nadu’s legal entitlement of 177.25 TMC of water comprised 60 TMC from the Kabini dam, 52 TMC from the Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS) dam and 80 TMC derived from Karnataka’s unregulated catchment areas at Biligundulu water gauge statio, located 200 kilometers away.
However, Karnataka rarely released the mandated quantum of water on schedule, and Tamil Nadu has to fight through various measures to secure its share, he said adding that Tamil Nadu had fiercely opposed the building of the dam with 67.15 TMC capacity at Mekedatu, just 4 kilometers above Biligundlu on the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
