Will Jayalalithaa attend the Cauvery authority meeting?

By Gargi Parsai

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 19. Will the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Ms. Jayalalithaa, attend the meeting of the Cauvery River Water Authority to be chaired by the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, here on September 22? After all, the meeting has been convened at the behest of the Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry Governments.

The single-point agenda of the meeting will be to consider the request of the Tamil Nadu Government for release of at least one tmcft water by Karnataka till the end of October to save its standing kuruvai crop. A similar demand was raised informally by Tamil Nadu in the official-level meeting of the Cauvery Monitoring Committee on September 6, but turned down by the Karnataka team on the plea that it faced drought situation and was in no position to release water.

The Secretary, Water Resources, Mr. B.N. Navalawala, who is the member-secretary of the Authority sent out invites to the four Chief Ministers for the meeting on Tuesday. Besides Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, the Chief Ministers of Karnataka and Kerala are the members of the Authority. The meeting is expected to review the inflows in the four reservoirs in Karnataka, the water-level in Mettur reservoir and the request of Tamil Nadu for water releases.

As of now, the water flows to Mettur from Karnataka are short by almost 70 tmcft, although the water level position in Mettur has improved slightly by about 1.5 tmcft between last week and now on account of some rain upstream of Mettur and in isolation in the State. There has been some rainfall in the fringes of the catchment area in Karnataka as well.

Since the Monitoring Committee meet, an all-party delegation from Tamil Nadu met the Prime Minister and apprised him of the urgent need for water releases into Mettur to save the standing paddy crop. This was followed by a similar delegation led by the Karnataka Chief Minister, Mr S.M. Krishna which met the President, Mr. K.R. Narayanan and the Prime Minister and expressed the ``difficulty'' in making the stipulated water releases to Tamil Nadu.

The Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal had in its interim award asked Karnataka to release 205 tmcft water to Tamil Nadu in a water year. Tamil Nadu is supposed to in turn release 6 tmcft water to Pondicherry. For implementation of the interim award, Tamil Nadu had moved the Supreme Court and the apex court had directed the Government to put in place a mechanism to ensure that. After marathon meetings with the four Chief Ministers, the Prime Minister had then constituted a Cauvery River Water Authority, which is assisted by an official level Cauvery River Water Monitoring Committee.

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