[1]Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be chairing the meeting of the Cauvery River Authority (CRA) on Wednesday with a major item on the agenda being Tamil Nadu’s demand that Karnataka release water immediately to save standing crops.
Chief minister J. Jayalalithaa may have played a leading role in getting the CRA to meet as well as the PM to head it, which Mr Manmohan Singh will be doing for the first time since the panel has not met after UPA-I came to power in 2004.
The Supreme Court had also reprimanded the PMO for not convening the meeting. Even so, it is Jaya’s strident demands that seem to have woken up the Centre to the state’s plea for water that is due to it even in a ‘distress’ year of poor monsoons.
With Karnataka declining to give water, save for a little (10,000 cusecs a day till September 20) it had committed to in SC last week, the meeting is expected to be a stormy one with the CMs of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Puducherry and Kerala also present.
Jayalalithaa has championed Tamil Nadu’s water rights in a strident manner and the outcome of the meeting as well as what happens from here in SC in a longstanding dispute will be fraught with interest.
The dispute between the two states dates back to the ’90s from when the water war has raged on over sharing of the flows down the Cauvery.
The Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal had in 2007 submitted its report, awarding water share to all the states concerned.
In its submission to the Supreme Court, Tamil Nadu had stated that in the current irrigation year (2012-13), the southwest monsoon was not vigorous in the Cauvery catchment of Karnataka and yet the state has received 21.9 tmcft of inflow in its four major reservoirs up to July 20.
After nine years
* The Cauvery River Authority (CRA) is meeting again after nine years.
* This is the first CRA meeting to be chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
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[1] http://archive.asianage.com/jayalalithaa-dc7jpgcropdisplayjpg-494