PM may convene river water authority meet

By Gargi Parsai

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 13. The Union Ministry of Water Resources will await the outcome of the meeting of the all-party delegation from Karnataka and the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, before deciding the next course of action. In all probability, the Prime Minister may convene a meeting of the Cauvery River Water Authority to find a solution.

The authority is chaired by Mr. Vajpayee with the Chief Ministers of the four Cauvery basin States as members.

At the end of the five days' deadline set during the Cauvery Monitoring Committee meeting here on September 6 to review the situation, the Ministry sources today said they will wait for the Karnataka delegation to meet the Mr. Vajpayee. Basically a decision will now have to be taken at a higher political level.

As per the data available with the Ministry, water in the Mettur reservoir in Tamil Nadu is about 8 tmcft, which will last for another three days as a minimum level of 5 tmcft would have to be maintained. It seems the State would have to hold out for another three days despite its kuruvai crop being threatened. In normal times an outflow of one tmcft would have contained the kuruvai crop. But with no signs of rainfall, the releases from Mettur should be around 1.5 tmcft daily to save the standing crop and the subsequent sambha nurseries.

The Karnataka Government has already said that it was facing serious difficulty due to drought conditions in the State and the water level in all its four reservoirs was low. It was expected that the South-West monsoon showers, which normally occur in September, would bail out the States but that has not happened.

An all-party delegation from Tamil Nadu had already met the Prime Minister on September 10 and sought water for saving the crop. The Cauvery River Water Disputes Tribunal had said in its interim award in June, 1991, that Karnataka would make stipulated releases of 205 tmcft to Tamil Nadu in a water year.

Tamil Nadu had taken the matter of implementation of the interim award to the Supreme Court and it had directed the Central Government to find a mechanism for implementation. Mr. Vajpayee had then called a meeting of the four Chief Ministers of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Kerala and by consensus, set up a Cauvery River Water Monitoring Authority under which the Monitoring Committee was set up to advise and monitor flows.

The Monitoring Committee with the Water Resources Secretary in the chair met with the Chief Secretaries of the four States on September 6 but failed to find a solution. The next logical step is for the Prime Minister to convene a meeting of the Authority, notwithstanding the fact that the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Ms. Jayalalithaa, has called for abolition of this mechanism.

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