Chennai: Slamming as “mere eye-wash” the Friday meeting by Union water resources ministry with stakeholder states on Cauvery issue, DMK working president and Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly M. K. Stalin has asked Chief Minister K. Palaniswami to convene a special session of the legislature before the budget session slated next week for discussing the “livelihood of farmers and people’s drinking water supply”.
This special session, sought by him already during his meeting with the CM on March 3, became critically essential now in the light of the “step-motherly attitude by the Centre” towards TN on the inter-state dispute involving poll-bound Karnataka, Stalin said in a letter to CM on Saturday.
Tamil Nadu wanted the Centre to constitute the Cauvery Management Board (CMB) as directed by the Supreme Court, which had recently pronounced its verdict on the inter-state dispute involving Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry. On February 22, an all-party meet chaired by the CM decided that he would lead a delegation of leaders of all parties, farmers and MPs from the state to meet PM Narendra Modi on the Cauvery issue. The meet had also resolved to urge Modi to immediately set up the CMB and Cauvery Water Regulatory Authority as per the SC order that these bodies be set up within six weeks.
In his letter, Stalin said while the PM did not meet the proposed all-party delegation and the TN panel was told to see Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari first, “now only an eyewash drama by way of an officials-level meeting has been done with electoral motives”. The DMK charge is that the PM and his BJP were more bothered about the upcoming Karnataka elections than the welfare of farmers and people in Tamil Nadu, and honouring the Supreme Court direction.
“The Union government has insulted the overall sentiments of Tamil Nadu on this very important issue. The government not willing to meet all-party leaders from Tamil Nadu is against democratic ethos,” Stalin said in the letter. He pointed out that three weeks have passed since the Supreme Court verdict, but the Centre “has not come forward to constitute CMB”. He also wanted to know if the TN officials present at Friday meeting at New Delhi had “opposed' Water Resources Ministry Secretary U P Singh's remarks that the apex court had in its order not used the words Cauvery Management Board. The Ministry had held the meeting on Friday in New Delhi with officials from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry.
The DMK leader said that “with Centre not constituting the CMB and holding eyewash like consultation with an eye on Karnataka polls, exerting more pressure on it over CMB without further delay becomes more imperative.”
“Therefore, I, on behalf of Principal Opposition party DMK, urge you to convene a special session of the Assembly to (discuss) the livelihood of farmers and people's drinking water supply,” he told Palaniswami in his letter.
He said this special session should be convened ahead of the budget session which would be held following the presentation of the budget by Finance Minister O. Panneerselvam on March 15.
