Giving a detailed account of the consistent and firm steps taken by her government to get Cauvery water, Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Monday said as per the orders of the Cauvery River Authority and Cauvery Monitoring Committee, 56.816 tmcft of water should have been received at Biligundulu between September 12 and December 31. So far, 47 tmcft of water has been received at Mettur reservoir.
She said the Mettur reservoir was opened for irrigation on the basis that enough water would be received from Karnataka and that the north-east monsoon would be normal.
In the end of August, the Chief Minister she had announced a special package for saving the Samba crops at an expenditure of `68.1 crore. Another special package was announced on December 5 at a cost of `69.88 crore. The government had paid the premium for crop insurance on behalf of the farmers.
As per the distress sharing ratio, Karnataka should have released 110 tmcft of water to TN but only 63 tmcft of water had been received at Mettur reservoir.
Since the storage level had gone down to 8.582 tmcft, water from the dam for irrigation had been stopped since December 21 and was being released only for drinking. As many as 5.51 lakh farmers, i.e., all farmers in delta districts, had been covered under crop insurance scheme.
Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa also reiterated that a maximum of `13,692 per acre would be paid as compensation for the crop loss to the farmers.