Karnataka has no plans to proceed with the Mekedatu hydro-electric project on the Cauvery without informing the Supreme Court. The Karnataka government conveyed this to Tamil Nadu in an official communication on Tuesday.
In the past one week, farmers and the Tamil Nadu government reacted sharply to reports that the Karnataka government, on November 11, invited a global expression of interest in a technical study for the project, which envisages storage of 45 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft).
The Tamil Nadu government has even moved the Supreme Court.
But Karnataka, in the communication sent through P.B. Ramamurthy, Additional Chief Secretary (Water Resources Department), to M. Saikumar, Principal Secretary (Public Works), did not accept Tamil Nadu’s stand that “prior consent of the Government of Tamil Nadu” should be taken for the project.
In this context, the communication cited the ruling of the Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench in April 2000 in a case involving Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka in the Krishna water dispute.
Karnataka argued that the project was planned within its territory and was not governed by the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal’s final order of 2007. There was “no impediment” to the execution of the project. “The only obligation imposed on… Karnataka in the said Final Order is to ensure 192 tmc [ft] at the inter-State border Billigundlu in a normal year,” Mr Ramamurthy said, recalling that Karnataka, in September 2009, submitted to the Supreme Court that it had plans to implement both the Shivasamudram and Mekedatu hydro-electric projects on its own.
