Deve Gowda to Fast unto Death on Injustice to Karnataka on Cauvery Issue

From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore

Bangalore, Dec 7: Former Prime Minister and JD(S) Supremo H D Deve Gowda on Friday threatened to launch an indefinite fast unto death to protest against the gross injustice to Karnataka on the Cauvery issue.

''I will first seek an appointment and meet Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, who is also the Cauvery River Authority Chairman, and Union Water Resources Minister Harish Rawat, who is the Cauvery Monitoring Committee Chairman, and try to convince them about the difficulties faced by the State due to failure of monsoon and poor storage in all the reservoirs in the Cauvery basin,” Gowda said and also indicated that he would meet Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar seeking permission to raise the Cauvery issue in Lok Sabha.

''If all these efforts fail to bear the desired results,” Gowda said, ''I will be left with no other alternative but to resort to Gandhian form of protest by offering indefinite hunger strike in front of the Mahatma Gandhi statue in Bangalore.”

The JD(S) Supremo said the farmers in the Cauvery basin districts of Karnataka would lose their single dry crop, which is also the only crop they were able to raise this year, due to the non-availability of water and urged the State Government to provide adequate compensation to the State’s farmers for their loss. He, however, refused to spell out the quantum of loss or the compensation to be paid as well as set a deadline.

Meanwhile, the State Legislature session now underway at the Belgaum Suvarna Soudha, had to be curtailed for the day and postponed till Monday over the Cauvery issue without transacting any business.

The opposition Congress and JD(S) members trooped into the well of the assembly and shouted slogans against the State Government for forsaking the interests of Karnataka’s farmers by releasing Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu on Thursday night. The efforts of treasury benches, especially Law and Parliamentary Affairs Ministr S Suresh Kumar and Education Minister Visveshwara Hegde Kageri, to explain the compulsions of the Government and the need to honour the Supreme Court’s direction for releasing 10,000 cusecs to the neighbouring State fell on deaf years.

The assembly speaker K G Bopaiah had a tough time in maintaining order in the house and finally decided to adjourn the sitting till Monday, when his attempt to allow cooling of tempers by announcing a brief half hour break by adjourning failed.

Gowda, who will turn 80 in May next year, said: ''If I am forced to resort to hunger strike, it will be a fast unto death. I have fought on the Cauvery issue for 50 years. This will be my last battle, I don’t mind laying down my life to protect the interests of the State and its farmers.”

With low storage in the Krishnaraja Sagar dam and practically nil storage in Kabini, Harangi and Hemavathy reservoirs, the JD(S) national president said Karnataka would not be able to meet Tamil Nadu’s demand for release of 30 tmcft of water.

Apart from meeting the water requirements of the farmers in the Cauvery basin districts in about a lakh acres for their single dry crop till the end of January, Karnataka is required to meet the drinking water requirements of Bangalore, Mysore, Mandya and other towns in the basin areas till the onset of monsoon in the first week of June.

''While farmers in the Cauvery basin districts have been struggling to eke out even a single dry crop due to the failure of monsoon this year, Tamil Nadu government is unreasonably demanding 30 tmcft of water for its third crop knowing fully well that Karnataka is in a difficult distress situation,” he said and blamed the national media, including TV chanels, of giving an one-sided picture and projecting as if the upper riparian State of Karnataka is the culprit.

He said the Supreme Court had directed the State to release 10,000 cusecs of water daily from December 5 at Biligondlu and decreed that the order would be in force till December 9 and that the issue would be taken up by the apex court again on December 10. The Supreme Court had also directed that the Cauvery Monitoring Committee shall meet on December 6 or 7 and ''determine the requirement of water for standing crops in the States of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and take a decision on that day.”

Disclosing that the Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar had called and spoke to him on phone last night, the JD(S) supremo said that he expressed his views in the larger interests of the State and its farmers. ''I don’t want to politicize the issue even though the successive Congress and BJP governments in Delhi had favoured Tamil Nadu at the expense of Karnataka,” he said and hoped that the Chief Minister and the State’s Water Resources Minister Basavaraja Bommai will be successful in their mission to convince the Prime Minister and Union Water Resources Minister about the grave situation in the State.

Gowda mentioned that Karnataka received a step-motherly treatment and had always been projected as the villain and the State’s MPs were prevented from raising the issue in parliament right from the beginning.

''Karnataka has been receiving a raw deal before and after independence,”  he said pointing out that the colonial British rulers had also favoured Tamil Nadu and the 1924 agreement was a thrust on the princely state of Mysore by the Madras Presidency under Britishers. The then Diwan of Mysore, Sir M Visvesvaraya, had faced immense hurdles and obstacles in building the KRS dam and all sorts of unjust restrictions were thrust on the State, he said.

Gowda pointed out that Karnataka had been wronged even by the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal and its interim award of 2004, which was subsequently notified, was the ''first of its kind not only in the country but in the entire world” in all river water sharing disputes.

During the last 20 years since the implementation of the interim award of the Cauvery tribunal, the former Prime Minister said distress situation had arisen in barely four years while there has been no problem in 16 years. ''It is necessary to solve the issue in a humanitarian angle with a spirit of give and take rather than injecting politics as it would vitiate the atmosphere and prevent any solution,” he said.