Now contempt pours into Cauvery muddle

Sethi’s missive comes a day after Krishna communicated to the Centre his Cabinet’s decision to suspend releases after a farmer’s suicide in the Kabini reservoir. He wrote to Krishna after meeting with Prime Minister Vajpayee this morning.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa is arriving in Delhi tomorrow, leading an all-party delegation to the Prime Minister even as her government sought to initiate contempt of court proceedings against Karnataka for failing to honour directions to release 1.25 tmc ft of water every day between Sept 4-8. The contempt plea is likely to come up for hearing on Monday, when the court will also hear Tamil Nadu’s original petition on the Cauvery issue.

Krishna is arriving here tomorrow to consult leaders of all parties to finalise the stand to be taken by the state before the court.

Jayalalithaa convened an all-party meeting in Chennai but her aggressive stance lost some of its sting with the Opposition DMK boycotting it and the Congress walking out in protest against her demand that the Congress government in Karnataka be dismissed.

‘‘How can one state government demand the dismissal of another? If failure to maintain law and order is a ground for dismissal then the first government which should be dismissed is that of Jayalalithaa’s,’’ state Congress leaders said.

While Karnataka is not too apprehensive about convincing the court about compliance of its orders, it is unsure about how it is going to explain its decision to suspend water releases after a farmer committed suicide two days ago. There is realisation in state government circles that it may only invite the apex court’s wrath if it hides behind the excuse of worsening law and order.

Indications are, it will plead insufficient water availability in its reservoirs due to depleting inflows for failure to comply with the orders of the CRA. But the difficulty here is that Karnataka itself offered to release 8,000 cusecs of water daily when the CRA met on Sept 8.