Cauvery tangle: Bandh brings K'taka to halt, public transport off roads
Bengaluru: The one-day Karnataka shutdown called by pro-Kannada outfits on Friday to protest against the Supreme Court's direction to release Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu threw normal life out of gear and brought the state to a halt.
Schools, colleges and many offices were closed in Bengaluru and public transport remained off the roads.
Authorities made a series of preventive arrests through the night of Thursday-Friday in the city and other districts in the state.
The city of Bengaluru turned into a fortress with an unprecedented deployment of local, state and central police forces across the IT capital as it braces for mob violence.
Among the central police forces, who were deployed included four companies of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), two companies of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and two companies of Rapid Action Force (RAF).
Besides the police deployment made in Mysore, KRS Dam, Mandya, Kabini, a similar number of police personnel were deployed on Friday in the city as officials said they anticipated trouble from anti-social elements in the Tamil speaking areas of West Bengaluru. The DG stated that his force will step up protection for the Tamil dominated areas in the city as well as the state.
In view of this, the DG has requested two KSRP platoons from Kerala, which will be deployed in the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border and also one state reserve police force from Andhra which will be deployed in north Karnataka district because they are anticipating that those who have taken part in the Mahadayi protests will join hands with the Cauvery activists on Friday.
Can this modified plea win water case?
Stung by widespread uproar and violent protests against the state government’s decision to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced a two-pronged strategy which includes moving the Supreme Court on Monday through a modification application against the apex court’s order to ensure flow of 15,000 cusecs for ten days to the neighbouring state.
The other strategy would be to hand in a reply to the Cauvery Supervisory Committee at a time when it is contemplating to send an experts’ team to assess the ground situation, Mr Siddaramaiah told the media on Thursday after reviewing security measures for the state-wide bandh on Friday.
“We are going explain our plight and shortage of water to the Supreme Court. We will request the court to reconsider its order to release 15, 000 cusecs of water for a period of 15 days,” he added.
Asked whether senior counsel Fali Nariman had agreed on release of water, Mr Siddaramaiah said the state had not made a commitment. “In view of the tribunal order, and distress in our state, our legal team submitted that we will release 10,000 cusecs of water for 10 days. But there is a big difference between what we offered, and what the court ordered,” he added.
‘Send expert team’
Chief Secretary Arvind Jadhav has urged chairman of the Supervisory Committee, Union Ministry of Water Resources, to dispatch an expert team to study the ground realities in the Cauvery basin following directions from the SC to release 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.
In a letter to the Union water resources secretary, Mr Jadhav said the apex court has also called for an immediate supervisory meeting on the subject. The state government had held an all-party meeting presided over by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah recently and consulted various stake holders.
Opinions were expressed that the SC's order would have been different if the report of experts on ground realities in the Cauvery basin was available to the Supreme Court.
