MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court impleaded Kerala government in a public interest litigation, seeking formulation of a project to interlink small rivers and constructing dams in various districts to fulfill the agricultural needs of farmers, as many of the rivers have tributaries in Kerala.
The litigant P Ayyakannu, the State President of the National South Indian River Interlinking Agriculturist Association submitted that during monsoon seasons, nearly 166 to 180 TMC of water from more than 15 small rivers go waste by flowing into the Arabian Sea, which could be avoided if the rivers were interlinked by constructing dams.
However, the chief engineer in Plan Formulation Division of Water Resources Organisation in the Public Works Department (PWD), in his counter, submitted that in order to formulate such a project, the Tamil Nadu government would have to obtain concurrence from the Kerala government too as one of the projects interlinking Pandiyar and Punnampuzha rivers had most of its tributaries running in the territory of Kerala.
The official further pointed out that a project named Pandiyar-Punnampuzha Hydro Electric Project had already been formed by Tamil Nadu in 2006 and had been sent to the Kerala government for concurrence but Kerala had not responded yet.
Hence, no specific time frame can be fixed for the project at this stage as we need the concurrence of Kerala before taking further steps, the official added. Hearing the contentions, the HC bench impleaded the secretary of Inter-state Water Resources department of Kerala and issued a notice, returnable on or before the next hearing on October 29.