CHENNAI: The Cauvery water dispute is back in poll rhetoric in Tamil Nadu after Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami invoked it while campaigning at Bhuvanagiri in Cuddalore district last Friday. Levelling charges against former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi in connection with the dispute, Palaniswami had said that all disputes over Cauvery were addressed by former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. In response, DMK’s mouth piece Murasoli has come out with two pieces of editorials.
The Chief Minister had said that Karunanidhi had betrayed the State by not opposing construction of Kabini dam when he was the Chief Minister and added that no issue over Cauvery water would have arisen if Karunanidhi had stalled the project. He further said that Jayalalithaa, when she was the Chief Minister, addressed all issues over the Cauvery water sharing.
Recalling that the final verdict of Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal was pronounced in 2007, Palaniswami questioned why the DMK did not make efforts to publish the verdict in Union government’s gazette. It was published in the gazette only as a result of Jayalalithaa’s struggles by approaching Supreme Court. The Murasoli editorial on March 23 quoted DMK president MK Stalin from his campaign at Orathanadu in Thanjavur district, in which he said Karunanidhi was not the Chief Minister when Karnataka government started constructing the dam at Hemavathi across Cauvery in 1968.
The late leader was then Public Works Minister and had held talks with the Karnataka government over the issue following the instructions of the then CM CN Annadurai, the piece quoted Stalin as saying. On the Kabini dam, the editorial said the efforts to construct the dam commenced in 1958 and the efforts to construct the Hemavathi dam began in 1968. The then Chief Minister Karunanidhi approached the Supreme Court in 1969 seeking a stay on the efforts of the Karnataka government to construct dams across Cauvery river. But, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition in October 1971.
Elaborating on the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal’s verdict in 2007, another editorial published on March 24 said that the then DMK-led State government moved the Supreme Court for want of 60 TMC of more water from the Cauvery since the Tribunal, in its verdict, had missed a total of 4.56 lakh acres of irrigation area. The final hearing of the case was held in 2017 when Palaniswami was the Chief Minister and also held the PWD portfolio, the editorial said, and slammed that the Palaniswami-led government for failing to put forth valid arguments before the court based on the Tribunal’s guidelines.
The editorial blamed the ‘lethargic’ attitude of the government as the State lost 14.75 TMC of water. The Supreme Court reduced that amount of water from the 192 TMC awarded by the Tribunal by citing that Tamil Nadu had more groundwater resources. Going through the arguments of both the DMK and the AIADMK only results in more confusion than clarity regarding the row.