Madurai: Expressing protest over Kerala’s Forest and Public Works departments not allowing them to carry out maintenance work at the Mullaiperiyar dam site, two members of the sub-committee from Tamilnadu, walked out of the review meeting held on Friday.
The Tamilnadu members walked out of the meeting after they were not allowed by the Kerala government to take materials inside the dam.
In a letter to the committee, the members said it was meaningless to continue the review meeting when they were not allowed to do their work by the Kerala authorities. They said that the supervisory committee had permitted maintenance works to be carried out in the dam’s site as per the Supreme Court’s orders.
‘Just attending the meetings and finishing it after inspection of the dam was pointless, when work had to be done. Preventing us from doing our duty is a contempt of court,’ the letter said.
The Tamilnadu government recently strongly condemned neighbouring Kerala’s announcement to construct a new reservoir in the place of the existing Mullaperiyar dam and said the move was “arbitrary and amounted to contempt of Supreme Court order”.
Responding to Tamilnadu’s charge, the government of Kerala sought to allay concerns of the neighbouring state over the issue by clarifying that the proposal to build a new dam in the place of the over a century-old dam was put forth for ensuring the safety of the people living downstream.