CHENNAI: Local Administration Minister M.K. Stalin and Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudi will visit Hyderabad on August 5 to work out details on the receipt of Krishna water for the year.

Mr. Ponmudi, who informed the Assembly of the visit, assured the House that the Palar water issue would also be taken up then. This was in response to C. Gnanasekharan (Congress), who said that though the Andhra Pradesh Government had assured the Supreme Court that it would maintain status quo on the construction of a dam across the Palar, this was not so in practice.

He claimed that the Andhra Pradesh Government had issued an order on the construction and had begun preliminary work. Mr. Gnanasekharan said if the dam became a reality, then the whole of Vellore district would face severe water scarcity. Already, the district faced water shortage.

Intervening, Mr. Ponmudi, who is also in-charge of Public Works Department as Durai Murugan is indisposed, said Tamil Nadu Government was not aware of any order being issued by Andhra Pradesh.

This could not be true. In any case, he and Mr. Stalin would discuss the issue with representatives of Andhra Pradesh Government to resolve the issue amicably.

Debt relief fund

Gnanadas (MDMK) wanted the Government to consider setting up of an Agriculture Debt Relief Commission, a Farmers' Commission and a Price Stabilisation Fund, as had been done in Kerala. Farmers should be made aware of all aspects of seeds that used `traitor' technology and `terminator' technology. He also wanted the setting up of a road safety authority to look into issues in road safety. S.M. Velusamy (AIADMK) said in the absence of effective policing, terrorism was rearing its head again.

He wanted to know the fate of the prizes meant to the distributed to those who won in village sports events. Intervening, Mr. Stalin said that the prizes seemed to have been made with ulterior motive of garnering votes for the ruling party.

This was done in great haste ahead of the general elections. Caps and T-shirts had the face of the former Chief Minister on them. The DMK government will discuss and decide on the issue, he said.

N. Pongalur Palanisamy (DMK) said as much as 25 per cent of the population of Coimbatore were Malayalees. The DMK had promised to declare a local holiday for Onam. He wanted the Government to make an announcement on this.

Also, the Ezhava community in Kanyakumari was listed as backward community. This should be extended to people of the community in Coimbatore also, he said.

Mr. Palanisamy accused Kerala of delaying construction of Edamalaiyar.

He said that this was because, if the project was completed, then as per the agreement between the two States, the Neeraru-Anaimalaiyar scheme would be taken up. He requested the Government to take steps to ensure that the Neeraru - Anaimalaiyar scheme was taken up at an early date.

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