The Hindu : PM convenes CRA meeting today

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Sep 08, 2002

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PM convenes CRA meeting today

By Gargi Parsai

New Delhi Sept. 7. Bowing to pressure from the Karnataka Government, the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, has convened a meeting of the Cauvery River Authority (CRA) tomorrow — on the eve of his departure to the United States — to resolve the dispute over the sharing of Cauvery waters between Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Pondicherry.

The Supreme Court had on Monday ordered Karnataka to release 1.25 tmc ft (thousand million cubic feet) of water to Tamil Nadu everyday till the CRA met and took a decision on the issue. The nodal Central Ministry of Water Resources has no figures so far on the releases made by Karnataka since the court order.

The CRA consists of the Prime Minister (Chairman) and all the Chief Ministers of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Pondicherry. The consent of all the Chief Ministers is not mandatory, before a CRA meeting is convened, though there has to be a quorum of three Chief Ministers. The decisions are generally taken by consensus, but the Chair can certainly procure a decision in case of a deadlock.

The CRA is assisted by the official-level Cauvery Monitoring Committee (CMC) which failed in its meeting today to reach an agreement on the Central Water Commission's (CWC) proposed pro rata distress-sharing formula with Tamil Nadu ruling out the acceptance of any quantity of water release below the 1.25 tmc ft ordered by the Supreme Court.

The CMC Chairman and Union Water Resources Secretary, A.K. Goswami, later said that since ``no final conclusion'' could be arrived at on the CWC formula in the meeting, Karnataka offered to release water at an average rate of 8000 cusecs (0.7 tmc ft) daily for Mettur for September and October. But Tamil Nadu insisted on 1.25 tmc ft.

``The matter will now be placed before the Cauvery River Authority (to be chaired by the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee).''

He said, ``We tried. Both (the Chief Secretaries) tried. But couldn't come to a conclusion. They have their own constraints.''

In the last CRA meeting held on August 27, the Karnataka Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, had declined to release any quantum of Tamil Nadu's share of water claiming distress, despite repeated appeals by the Prime Minister and the Water Resources Minister, Arjun Charan Sethi.

Likewise, the Karnataka Government did not heed the advice of the CMC in its last meeting on August 9 to release even 3 tmc ft of water to Tamil Nadu, letting the downstream State's `kuruvai' crop wither. Now, facing the Supreme Court order on releasing water, Karnataka is pleading with the Prime Minister to bail it out.

Asked about Karnataka's objections to the CWC formula, its Chief Secretary, A. Ravindra, said, ``We have given our comments on the CWC formula. It is not acceptable to us. On how to modify it, we could not come to a conclusion. We are facing drought, poor rainfall. Still we agreed to release 8000 cusecs per day.''

Asked whether the formula was acceptable to Tamil Nadu, its Chief Secretary, Sukavaneshwar said, ``We took only the CWC formula as the basis.''

He said the State had a distress shortfall of 39.7 tmc ft, although the deficit as per the interim award of the Cauvery River Disputes Tribunal was ``much higher''.

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