Govt Denies Ban on Official Attending Cauvery Meeting

Chennai: The State government denied a media report that officials from the Water Resources Department were banned from attending the meeting of the Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee in New Delhi on Thursday and clarified that it had been deputing officials to all meetings, including the 94th meeting of the Cauvery Water Management Authority held at Puducherry on March 21, to uphold the rights of the State on the Cauvery water.

The official statement on Thursday referred to a newspaper report on Wednesday accusing the government of instructing officials to attend the meeting through video conference and not to personally participate and said that there was no such government order and the report was wrong.

At the meeting, officials participated online and made a demand for the release of 15 cusecs of water from the regulatory committee.

Officials had been regularly attending the meetings relating to the sharing of Cauvery water, both in person and online, and putting forth their arguments to secure the State’s rights and there was no ban on their attending the meetings, the government clarified in unequivocal terms.

The newspaper report, however, claimed that officials from the State Water Resources Department had privately expressed resentment over the instructions given to them by the Water Resources Department secretary Sandeep Saxena to attend the meeting on Thursday in New Delhi.

Since the officials had said that unless they were present at the meeting personally they would not be able to put forth their arguments on getting the due share of Cauvery water that Karnataka was refusing to release despite several orders by various committees and courts, the newspaper had made it an issue.

Leader of the opposition in the State Assembly Edappadi K Palaniswami urged the government to lift the ban and allow the officials to take part in the meeting and fight for the State’s rights. In a statement on Thursday, he said all other riparian States were sending their representatives for the meetings regularly.

Pointing out that the decision to not depute officials for the Cauvery-related meeting was wrong, he accused the DMK government of pledging the State’s rights on the feet of the Congress government in Karnataka.

Despite a friendly party in power in Karnataka, the DMK government was not trying to get water for the State through negotiation, Palaniswami charged and said that the government was playing a drama on it without taking the State's interest into account.

He also alleged that the DMK government was not acting tough on the Karnataka government on the Cauvery issue because members of the DMK family had business interests in the neighboring State and the government did not want to rock the boat.

Urging the government to take back on officials attending Cauvery-related meetings personally and allow them to participate in the discussions in the future, he said the Supreme Court had ordered Karnataka to release 177.25 TMC feet of water every year and it was pertinent to monitor the flow regularly by the various bodies appointed for that.

The next meeting of the Cauvery Water Management Committee is scheduled to be held on May 21.