Cauvery row: Deve Gowda writes to PM Modi, urges to form expert panel

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah welcomed Gowda’s move, maintaining that the intervention of the PM was essential to address the dispute through dialogue between the two states.

Gowda, in the letter, recalled that during the recently concluded session of Parliament, he had proposed to constitute “a committee of 5 experts independent of the party states and Union government, for undertaking an immediate site visit to assess more accurately the prevailing ground realities in both the states.”

This expert panel – independent of the party states and the Union government – should conduct “studies of all the identified/designated reservoirs in the Cauvery basin immediately.”

The studies should be placed before Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) and Cauvery Water Regulation Commission (CWRC) for consideration ahead of any decision on the release of water, he said.

This committee should be vested with the responsibility of deriving a suitable distress formula taking into consideration all factors such as rainfall deficiency, inflow to reservoirs, storage position, crop and drinking water requirements among others.

“To prevent further injustice (to Karnataka), the Jal Shakti Ministry should file an application in Supreme Court that they would send an expert committee…. I appeal to the PM, he should intervene now to file a revision petition,” Gowda said.

Following this, Siddaramaiah said that he was hopeful that Modi would honor the petition of Gowda and invite both states for talks over the dispute. “Karnataka has a history of putting up a united front by setting aside political differences when it came to issues of land, water and language. I am confident that BJP will continue this tradition like JD(S),” he said.