Basavraj Bommai accuses Congress regime of releasing water to Tamil Nadu, Dy CM DK Shivakumar hits back

Former CM Basavraj Bommai on Wednesday slammed the state Congress regime for releasing Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu after the neighbouring state approached the Supreme Court over the Mekedatu dispute, calling it an “unforgivable offence” to deny water to one’s own state’s farmers for another state.

Tamil Nadu, he said, had used twice as much water for the Kuruvai crop - a short-term, highly water-dependent crop that grows in the Cauvery Delta. “You [the state government] have created a situation where the share of water of our farmers is diverted to Tamil Nadu,” he said in a series of tweets on twitter.

He also slammed what he called a lack of consensus on Cauvery water management in Karnataka. “The day after Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that Cauvery water cannot be released, the irrigation department led by Deputy CM [DK Shivakumar] has released water to Tamil Nadu,” he said.


The state government, he said, should immediately stop the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu and convince the Supreme Court of the actual situation of the state.

Deputy CM DK Shivakumar, who holds the Water Resources portfolio, however, denied Bommai's allegations and said the state government had little say on release of water from KRS reservoir to Tamil Nadu as it came within the domain of the Centre.
Karnataka, he told the media, has to go by the advice of the legal experts on the subject, not decide on its own and later pay a big price.

The Congress party will protect the interests of the state’s farmers. The government has been treading carefully on the issue of sharing Cauvery water, and was avoiding a confrontation with Tamil Nadu, Shivakumar said.

On Tuesday, Shivakumar sought TN’s cooperation over the Mekedatu project, while assuring the state that Karnataka had already promised to release 10 tmcft of water from the river. The DMK regime in Tamil Nadu is an ally of the Congress party and is part of the united opposition alliance INDIA for the Lok Sabha polls in 2024. The Congress is sparing no effort in maintaining this alliance, with agriculture minister N Chaluvarayaswamy rushing to the state’s defence today, saying that TN was forced to go to the Supreme Court as the Centre was not acknowledging its demands.

The Cauvery river has been a bone of contention between the two states for years, with both states seeing violent protests during a dry spell in 2002. Karnataka is required to release 192 thousand million cubic feet of water to TN in a normal year under a Supreme Court-cleared water sharing formula. The 67 tmcft Mekedatu reservoir, if it comes up, will help in meeting part of the drinking water needs of Bengaluru, as Karnataka believes a lot of water that flows into the Bay of Bengal during monsoon season can be better utilised.

In 2017, the Congress regime had sought the neighbouring state’s approval for the project, calling it a win-win for both of them, saying that it would help in regulated release of water to Tamil Nadu.

Last year, the Congress, which was then in opposition in Karnataka, had taken out a padayatra, demanding the ruling BJP hasten the implementation of the project. The BJP had then said that the Congress had no moral right to protest as it had done nothing for the project when it was in power.