Chennai: Tamil Nadu will urge the Supreme Court to dismiss at the admission stage itself the Centre's 'Cauvery clarification-seeking petition' and also to pass clear and final orders on the constitution of the Cauvery Management Board (CMB) and Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC).
Revealing this in a statement here on Saturday, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami said he had directed the state's senior counsel to make the plea before the Supreme Court when the matter comes up before it. “I have also asked the senior counsel to plead before the Bench of Chief Justice of India on Monday (April 2) that TN's contempt petition against Centre should be taken up for hearing immediately”, the CM said.
Sources on Delhi said upon hearing TN's plea on Monday, the CJI is likely to set the date for hearing the TN petition along with the 'clarification-seeking petition' from the Centre.
CM Palaniswami slammed the Centre for filing its petition after TN moved the SC with the contempt plea, seeking clarifications on the 'scheme' propounded in the court order of February 16 order, and that too after the expiry of the six-week deadline set by the court. The Centre had now sought clarification whether the 'scheme' meant the CMB or a freshly evolved scheme of the Centre, he said.
“The Centre could have sought these clarifications immediately after the court's February 16 order instead of waiting this long”, said the CM.
Slamming the DMK led opposition for faulting his government on Cauvery, the CM said it was only Amma (Jayalalithaa) who succeeded in getting the Centre to gazette the final order of the Cauvery Tribunal that remained unattended for four years after pronouncement in 2007 while the DMK ruled Tamil Nadu and shared power at the Centre. As soon as she came to power in 2011, Amma had begun exerting pressure on the Centre for gazetting the Tribunal award and even moved the Supreme Court to finally get the court to order it in 2013, he recalled.
