Chief Secy meets Cauvery inspection team

The team, led by Central Water Commission Chairman GS Jha, held discussions with Chief Secretary P Ramamohana Rao and Public Works Department Principal Secretary SK Prabakar. Jha later told reporters that the team was processing the data collected in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and analysing them. It would submit its report in the Supreme Court on or before October 17. He thanked both the states “for nicely organising the visit and sharing the information so that we can be able to assess the ground realities in a very feasible manner.” Asked if Tamil Nadu had putforth any demand during Tuesday’s meeting, he replied in the negative. “There is no demand as such and we have not tried to put things in the demand and release manner. We will be just assessing the ground realities,” he said.

“Of course, the utilisation part will also be there; availability and utilisation, so you may say that the demand will be in the form what is the utilisation, what can be the best utilisation possible,” he added. Asked what the state farmers had told them, Jha said they had presented a memorandum in Tamil and that officials here have been asked to translate it and “distribute among the members, so that we can look (into it) before we embark on writing the report.” 

Farmers of the Cauvery delta region had on Monday told the team that they were incurring a loss of around Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 2,500 crore each year due to the Cauvery dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The team was formed by the Supreme Court to assess the situation in the Cauvery basin in both the states. It had already visited Karnataka last week. Earlier on Monday, farmers of the delta region showed the team members dry paddy fields and withered crops and explained the need for Karnataka to immediately release more water for their requirements.

Arupathy Kalyanam, general secretary of the Federation of Farmers’ Associations of the delta districts, submitted a memorandum to the committee. He said though the Mettur dam was opened for irrigation on September 20, most of the tailend areas had not received water yet. “As a result, farmers are not able to irrigate even the direct-sown paddy fields,” he said. Stating that normally, samba cultivation is completed before the end of September every year, he alleged that for the past three decades, Karnataka had taken “complete control” of the Cauvery flows.“Due to this crisis, the delta farmers have been incurring a financial loss of around Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 2,500 crore every year,” he said in the memorandum.

Kalyanam said this year, around 4.25 lakh acres of direct-sown paddy fields in Thanjavur, Nagapattinam and Tiruvarur districts were affected as Karnataka had refused to release adequate water. In addition, samba transplantation has been completed in 40,000 acres and the crops were awaiting adequate water flows, said Kalyanam. 

As Karnataka is continuously stepping up water release each day, the Stanley reservoir in Mettur is seeing increased inflow. At Hogenakkal the flow had almost doubled. On Tuesday it went up to 13,000 cusec. On Monday 9,100 cusec was received at the border. Boats were off the river for the second day. As a result, Mettur dam is also seeing additional water flowing in. The dam has been getting 715 cusec on Saturday and on Sunday when the Central team visited the dam, it started receiving 2,799 cusec. However, on Monday, 4,338 cusec was realized and it shot up to 6,873 cusec on Tuesday. If the inflow touches 12,000 cusec the dam may have comfortable storage in the coming days. For irrigation purposes 12,000 cusec is being released. The Mettur level stood at 69.07 feet on Tuesday.