The Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC) has decided to recommend to the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) that Karnataka should release 5,000 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu for the next 15 days.
The CWMA will take a call on the recommendation at a meeting, according to Vineet Gupta, chairman of the CWRC, told The Hindu on August 28. While Tamil Nadu sought 24,000 cusecs, Karnataka has indicated it would be able to supply 3,000 cusecs.
The meeting took into account the forecast of the Meteorological department for the next fortnight, Gupta said.
Reacting to the development, Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar, also Minister for Water Resources, said his State had appealed against the CWRC recommendation. “I am not going to talk till the final verdict comes,” Shivakumar told presspersons in Mysuru.
Karnataka had informed the committee about the ground reality in the state. “They [Tamil Nadu] asked for a lot more. We will protect the interest of the state as well as its farmers,” the Deputy Chief Minister said.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah told reporters in Mysuru that he would discuss the issue with Shivakumar, Irrigation Department officials and the legal team.
Contending that Karnataka had to save its standing crops and meet its drinking water requirements, Siddaramaiah said the CWRC’s recommendation to release 5,000 cusecs of water per day for next 15 days and the actual availability of the water would be discussed with the Irrigation Department.
He said Karnataka had to release 86 tmc feet of water during August in a “normal year”. So far, the state has released 30 tmc feet in the month of August in view of the scarcity of rain and poor storage levels in the reservoirs, he noted, while pointing out that “the distress formula has not yet been defined”.
Source: https://www.thehindu.com
Image courtesy: The Hindu/E. Lakshmi Narayanan
