Tamil Nadu oppn slams Karnataka on Cauvery

Chennai: The recalcitrant attitude of the Karnataka Government in not naming its member on the Cauvery Management Authority, despite the Centre's order based on the Supreme Court directive, has come in for sharp criticism from the opposition parties in Tamil Nadu, with PMK chief Dr S. Ramadoss going to the extent of demanding the dismissal of the HD Kumaraswamy government.

The TN parties and their leaders have been livid with the statements made by the Karnakataka CM Kumaraswamy and his father Deve Gowda that the issue of sharing of Cauvery waters could be resolved through talks between the governments of the riparian states - which effectively meant throwing into dustbin the Cauvery Management Authority (CMA) and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC) constituted by the Centre following the Supreme Court direction.

Actor-politician Kamal Haasan too got slammed for advocating talks for getting the Cauvery water, after he had a cozy meeting with the Karnataka CM at Bengaluru earlier this month. "Talking of talks now, after all these years of negotiations yielded nothing and we finally got the CMA/CWRC constituted by the Centre under the orders of the Supreme Court, only means that the Karnataka Betal (spirit of the Vikram-Betal story) climbing the drumstick tree once again", said PMK's Ramadoss.

And then, he came down to the more serious prose: "The Supreme Court has given the task of executing the Cauvery solution to the Centre; so if Karnataka fails to obey the Centre's notifications on this, the Centre should invoke Art 365 of the Constitution and bring that state under the Governor's rule. Thereafter, the Governor should have the dams in Karnataka opened for the release of Cauvery water into TN".

DMK working president M.K.Stalin hit out at CM Kumaraswamy for stating after his meeting with the PM and the Water Resources Minister in Delhi on Monday that he had asked them to have the Cauvery Management Scheme taken up for discussion in the Parliament before implementation. "For more than 20 days now, the Karnataka government is deliberately delaying the naming of its representative on the CMA", said Stalin.

"PM had no time for the Tamil Nadu CM and opposition parties to discuss Cauvery, but he now gave so much of time to Kumaraswamy for the same issue", Stalin said, adding that it thus seemed apparent that the BJP regime at the Centre is backing Karnataka "for the sake of a few Lok Sabha seats".

"We condemn the statements from the father and son", said CPI (M) state secretary K. Balakrishnan, referring to Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy advocating 'talks' on Cauvery rather than implementing the Central order on the Cauvery Scheme. "While those two are side-tracking the issue, our TN government is holding victory celebrations as though Cauvery has started flowing in; such debauchery", he said.