TIRUCHY/NEW DELHI/BENGALURU:AS the Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday reserved its judgment on Cauvery water dispute, farmers here said an inflow of 2,000 cusecs towards Mettur dam will not be sufficient to irrigate the standing Samba crops in the delta districts. The apex court had asked Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of water each day till further order.
“Judgment reserved. Interim order of October 18 to continue till further orders,” a Bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar said, while dealing with the maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala against the 2007 award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT). The Bench also asked the parties to file their written submissions by October 24 and said it would pass the order thereafter. Meanwhile in Bengaluru, Karnataka Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T B Jayachandra told reporters that the State government would stick to the Supreme Court direction to release 2,000 cusecs of water per day. “We will stick to the SC order. I want to say no more than that,” Jayachandra said.
Reacting to the order on release of 2,000 cusecs, Tamil Maanila Congress state president of farmers’ wing Puliyur Nagarajan said, “Public Works Department (PWD) officials are pursuing turn system to let water into 17 branch channels of Cauvery. But there is not enough water flow till the tail-end region, where cash crops have been cultivated. So ordering the Karnataka government to discharge 2,000 cusecs of water per day is highly inadequate.”
The 17 channels deviating from the course of Cauvery, have been irrigating about 2.2 lakh acres. “Though the SC order is a welcome move, 2,000 cusecs, which is hardly 0.2 TMC per day, is no match for the needs of delta farmers. Now, we are banking on monsoon to save the standing crops.” P R Pandian, convener of the Cauvery Delta All Farmers Association said.
Meanwhile, leaders of farmers organisations will soon hold a meeting in Chennai along with political party representatives to chalk out next course of action over the Cauvery row.