With just three more days to go for the six-week deadline set by the apex court to set up the Cauvery Management Board to end, protests, both in Tamil Nadu and Delhi, have reached new heights.
As a last ditch effort to press for the board, Tamil Nadu Public Works Department secretary Prabhakar and Tamil Nadu Cauvery Technical Cell chairman Subramaniam will meet Union ministry of water resources officials in Delhi on Tuesday. They will submit a rejoinder to Karnataka’s reply over the constitution of CMB and insist on the setting up of the board.
“The Centre will constitute the CMB. If they don’t, we will make them constitute,” Fisheries Minister D. Jayakumar said on Monday.
Meanwhile, farmers from the state, led by P.R. Pandian, leader of the Coordination Committee of All Tamil Nadu Farmers Association, began an indefinite hunger strike in Delhi, demanding the constitution of CMB. “Our hunger strike will continue. We will not accept any action by the Union government to replace the management board with a scheme,” said Pandian.
Earlier, the farmers from the state had staged an agitation in Delhi for over 100 days, a loan waiver for the drought-hit Tamil Nadu.
The AIADMK MPs too have been protesting since March 5, stalling the Parliament proceedings, demanding constitution of CMB, despite being ridiculed by their own counterparts from other parties from across the country.
While the TDP and YSRCP MPs have gone a step further to move a no-confidence motion and have even resigned from the Union cabinet while fighting for their demands, the AIADMK MPs in the Parliament have turned themselves into a laughing stock. “The no confidence motion brought by the YSRCP is different and Cauvery issue is different. These two cannot be linked. Our MPs have been protesting only to put pressure on the Centre for setting up of the CMB,” Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palanisami explained in the state assembly.
Meanwhile, the DMK had upped the ante on the Cauvery issue, calling for its executive committee meeting on Friday to discuss and decide on the future course of action if the CMB is not set up. Earlier, during its two-day conference at Erode, the DMK passed a resolution saying “setting up of any other panel in the place of CMB is unacceptable.”
With just three more days to go for the deadline set by the Supreme Court, the politics and protests over CMB has increased manifold.
How does the Cauvery Management Board work?
In the last 27 years, since the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) gave its verdict in June 1991, Tamil Nadu has received less than its share of Cauvery water for 18 years, during the crucial four months of June to September. In all, Tamil Nadu received its share in full only for nine years since 1991. And in 12 out of these 18 years even the annual realisation was much less than the tribunal’s order.
The deficit in water sharing had always been attributed to failure of the South West Monsoon. And now, the water share has been reduced from 192 tmcft to 177.25 tmfct by the Supreme Court. Farmers and political parties feel that only the setting up of CMB can ensure timely release of water to for a lower riparian state like Tamil Nadu.
The Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal, in its final order in 2007, mandated the setting up of Cauvery Management Board. As per the tribunal award, CMB will consist of a full-time chairman and two members appointed by the Centre. The chairman will be an irrigation engineer in the rank of a chief engineer, with not less than 20 years experience in water resources management. And out of the two full-time members, one member will be an irrigation engineer with field experience in operation, management, maintenance of reservoirs and large irrigation projects. The second full-time member will be an agricultural expert, particularly agronomy.
Apart from these two-full time members, the ministry of water resources and ministry of agriculture will nominate a part-time member each respectively, in the rank of chief engineers. Along with these three full-time and two part-time Central government officials, the board will also have representatives from each state—Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Pudcherry—as part-time members nominated by the respective states. Besides, the board will also have a secretary.
The CMB will devise methods to determine the sharing of waters from Kabini and its tributaries, to Tamil Nadu and the other states. It will also monitor the situation with the help of the Cauvery Regulation Committee and the state authorities, focusing on the storage position, rainfall, inflows and make way for distribution as per the water delivery schedules.