BENGALURU (The Thursday Times) — A row over Karnataka’s planned Mekedatu dam on the Cauvery river has set two Congress leaders against each other, after Karnataka Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar said on Saturday that the project was his state’s right and Tamil Nadu’s Congress president, Manickam Tagore, said the party there would never allow it.
Shivakumar renewed his push for the dam on Friday at a government event in Mysuru attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He told the gathering that the Supreme Court had ruled in favour of the project and urged Modi to grant its final clearance. His critics in Tamil Nadu say he also declared that nobody could stop the dam from being built.
On Saturday he stood by his position. “Anyone is free to oppose it, but Tamil Nadu must recognise that this is our State and our right,” he told reporters, offering to take a delegation from Tamil Nadu to the dam site to explain the project. He said Karnataka would respect Tamil Nadu’s entitlement of 177 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) of Cauvery water, as set by the Supreme Court. “This is not a political matter,” he said.
Tagore called Shivakumar’s remarks “highly condemnable” and a violation of the Supreme Court’s verdict and the final award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal. “It is the duty of the Modi government at the Centre to not allow Karnataka to lay even a single brick for the Mekedatu dam,” he wrote on X. “On behalf of the Tamil Nadu Congress, we will never allow this project to happen.”
He said the reservoir, planned with a capacity of 67.15 tmcft about 4 kilometres upstream of Biligundlu on the state border, would hold back about 80 tmcft of rain-fed flow from Karnataka’s unregulated catchment that Tamil Nadu is entitled to, and could turn the Cauvery delta into a desert. He also accused the Centre of “blatant bias” and urged Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay to step up the state’s legal fight.
Tamil Nadu closes ranks
M.K. Stalin, the DMK president and former chief minister, wrote to Vijay on Saturday urging him to call an all-party meeting, and to have elected representatives take its resolutions to Modi along with a resolution against the dam that the state Assembly passed in June. He said Shivakumar’s remarks had caused considerable concern among the state’s farmers.
Tamil Nadu government sources said Vijay was set to travel to Delhi on November 16 to meet Modi and ask the Centre not to grant any clearances for the project.
The BJP’s chief spokesperson in Tamil Nadu, Narayanan Thirupathy, accused Congress of “playing a big drama” over the dam and of creating enmity between the two states, while AIADMK spokesperson Kovai Sathyan accused Shivakumar of misquoting the Supreme Court and said his party would take the matter up legally.
Tamil Nadu, the downstream state, has long opposed the project, arguing that no structure can be built on the Cauvery without the consent of the basin states. Karnataka says the reservoir would provide drinking water for Bengaluru and generate power while still releasing Tamil Nadu’s share. Shivakumar said his government had sought forest and environmental clearances from the Centre and was preparing the required documents.
