Tamil Nadu Officials Walkout From Cauvery Water Management Authority Meeting As Karnataka Does Not Agree To Immediately Release 37.9 TMC

Officials from Tamil Nadu who represented the state at a meeting of the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) today (11 August) in New Delhi staged a walkout, reported T Muruganandham, an Associate Editor with The New Indian Express.

Speaking about the meeting, the state's Water Resources secretary, Sandeep Saxena said that Tamil Nadu demanded the immediate release of 37.9 tmc of water to make up for the deficit and asked the Authority to direct Karnataka to release Cauvery water daily.

As Karnataka did not agree to the request and a solution could not be found, the Tamil Nadu officials walked out, he said.

This comes days after Chief Minister MK Stalin wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking him to direct the Congress government in Karnataka to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu in order to save the Kuruvai crop.

He had then mentioned that the state was facing a deficit of 28.8 TMC. Alleging that Karnataka was not releasing water in spite of having sufficient water, he had written, "Such a huge shortfall of 28.8 TMC has been thrust on Tamil Nadu, even while Karnataka has a gross storage of 91 TMC in its four major reservoirs, against their full storage capacity of 114.6 TMC."

Reacting to the letter, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president K Annamalai had then said, "This is the reality of I.N.D.I.A Alliance. They come to our Hon PM Thiru @narendramodi avl complaining about their alliance partners. The grim scenario faced by the farmers today has to do much with the Corrupt DMK government’s pledging of the interests of the people of TN for their political gains."

He had earlier criticised Chief Minister Stalin for not raising the issue of Cauvery water and the Mekedatu project during his visit to Bangalore for the meeting of opposition parties.