Bengaluru: As anger over the chief minister's decision to release Cauvery water to the lower riparian state of Tamil Nadu swept like wildfire across the Cauvery basin, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday moved swiftly to douse the negative sentiment being spread against his government and the legal team that had advised successive state governments that preceded his own government with a radio address to farmers, appealing for calm.
In adherence to the Supreme Court order, Karnataka had, from Tuesday night begun releasing 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu, as against its own generous offer to release 10,000 cusecs a day.
Laying out the case that his government had little choice, but to comply with the SC ruling, CM Sidddaramaiah tellingly, revealed to journalists at a specially convened breakfast meeting that despite the state being in distress, he had followed the SC order to a T.
A man carries a bunch of pots while protesting against the Supreme Court decision in Bengaluru on Wednesday (Photo: Shyam Sundar Vattam/R. Samuel)
"For drinking water, we need 28.08 tmc of water and for agriculture, we need 47.71 tmc. And for filling the tanks, we need 11.58 tmc. We have only 58.78 tmc of water in all our four reservoirs, but we have complied," he said.
Mr Siddaramaiah defended the government's decision to release water to Tamil Nadu. "It is inevitable to comply with the Supreme Court order. Failing which we would face contempt of court case and we do not want to get into such situation. Therefore, we decided to release water," he said.
However, signaling what the CM will do next, the Principal Secretary, water resources department, Rakesh Singh told Deccan Chronicle that the authority would resume release of water for standing crops in Karnataka as soon as
possible.
Mr. Singh said that Karnataka requested the Cauvery Supervisory Committee headed by the Union water secretary to assess the ground-level situation, indicating he was pinning his hopes on the north-east monsoon kicking in within the next 15 days to a month, boosting the groundwater level, which the fact-finding mission could use to ensure a more equitable arrangement was put in place.
"In 2012, a technical team visited the Cauvery reservoirs and we think this time around, a similar exercise might happen. However, so far, we have not received any communication as yet," he said.
‘Fali not at fault’
Defending the state’s counsel Mr Fali Nariman and his legal team, the CM said, “He (Nariman) is a senior advocate. Last week when I went to Delhi, I met him at his residence. In fact it was Mr Nariman, who during the hearing on the petition filed by Tamil Nadu, made a goodwill gesture to give water to Tamil Nadu. He might have made that offer seeing the circumstances in the court hall. The court immediately accepted his suggestion. He has been representing the state for a very long time. In the past, he made a similar gesture in 2012 which was accepted by the previous BJP government. Mr Nariman did no wrong. We will stand by his view.”
The De-distress formula
- CM Siddaramaiah is pinning his hopes on the the Cauvery Supervisory Committee (CSC)’s visit to Karnataka. “We will press the committee to rework the distress formula,” he said.
- Mr Siddaramaiah has reached out directly to farmers via an address through AIR.
- After the meeting chaired by the CM, the next legal course of action will see water being released as per the SC’s order for the next two to three days and thereafter at the earliest by Monday, an application will be filed seeking modification of the order.
