Supreme Court team to visit Mullaperiyar site
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The Supreme Court appointed empowered committee, formed to study all aspects of the dispute between Kerala and Tamil Nadu over the Mullaperiyar dam, on Monday decided to send technical experts to the dam site even as the TN government filed an application in the Supreme Court seeking to direct the Central government to deploy CISF at Mullaperiyar to prevent 'mob vandalism' of the dam by political parties from Kerala.
Meanwhile, the full bench of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which met here on receiving a plea from Kerala MPs on the dam issue, decided to consider the matter only after the SC-appointed committee filed its final report.
The NHRC will take up the matter in March to study the MPs’ plea to take 'humanitarian action' towards the people threatened by the dam.
Considering the Kerala government’s plea that the dam has developed fresh cracks after the recent tremors in the area and that it endangered the safety of the dam and the lives of the people downstream, the empowered committee decided to send two technical experts in the committee, C.D. Thatte and D.K. Mehta, to visit the dam. The committee, however, did not take any decision on Kerala’s plea to bring in those experts from IIT-Roorkee who had conducted a seismic study around the dam.
The committee, headed by former Chief Justice of India, Justice A.S. Anand, has also decided to resume hearing both the parties in view of the recent spat between both the state governments. It studied the TN government’s rejoinder to Kerala’s detailed project report (DPR) on constructing a new dam that asserts the existing dam is as good as a new one.
The committee will hold its next meeting on January 2 and 3. With the recent developments, the committee that was planning to submit its final report in January is likely to use the maximum allowed time till February. Meanwhile, the water ministry on Monday got a fresh sign of hope to convene a meeting between the governments of both the states to resolve the dispute.
The ministry, according to sources, has got positive signals from the TN government, which had earlier refused to participate in the meeting. The ministry, that was directed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to convene a meeting between the warring states, is likely to call the meeting in the third week of December, informed sources added.
The TN government had earlier released an official statement turning down the ministry’s call for an informal meeting on Mullaperiyar on December 5. However, the Central ministry on Monday clarified that the TN had only pointed out its inconvenience to attend the meeting on the said date.
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