Chennai: The Tamilnadu government today strongly opposed the Union Ministry’s clearance to Karnataka to prepare a detailed project report to build a dam across the Cauvery at Mekedatu at the Cauvery Water Management Authority meeting in New Delhi.
The second meeting of the Cauvery Water Management Authority began today, presided over by Massod Hussain. It is being attended by officials from Tamilnadu, Kerala, Puducherry and Karnataka.
The officials representing Tamilnadu opposed the Union government’s permission and argued that it
was against the Supreme Court’s order on the Cauvery river water sharing issue.
The Centre has cleared the pre-feasibility report of Mekedatu project with certain conditions, which means that the Karnataka government can go ahead with the preparation of a detailed project report.
The project to build a balancing reservoir at Mekedatu on the Cauvery river – at an investment of around Rs 5,912 crore — was proposed by Karnataka.
Following the clearance, Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy has been holding discussions with officials to speed up the process.
At a time when Karnataka is not keen to release Cauvery water for Tamilnadu, their plans to build a check dam has irked the Tamilnadu government.
The Tamilnadu government had filed a petition in the Supreme Court, seeking it to quash the Union Ministry’s clearance for the project report.
In the plea, Tamilnadu has mentioned in detail the problems the State and its farmers would suffer if the neighbouring State constructed a dam across the river.
Recently, Palaniswami had requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to direct the Water Resources Ministry to forthwith withdraw the permission given to Karnataka.
As soon as the Central Water Commission gave its go-ahead for the Mekedatu project, Union Minister of State for Finance, Pon Radhakrishnan, made his stand clear that he was totally opposed to the project.
And the DMK convened an all-party meet during which a resolution to stage a massive agitation 4 December at Tiruchi was passed.