Written by: Express News Service
2 min readNew DelhiDec 2, 2011 03:56 AM IST
First published on: Dec 2, 2011 at 03:56 AM IST
The Tamil Nadu government on Thursday moved the Supreme Court accusing the Kerala government of spreading a fear psychosis on the safety of the Mullaperiyar dam,even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,in a letter to TN Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa,said nothing should be said or done to cause undue alarm.
The Kerala government led by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has been pushing for a new dam,saying that Idukki district,where the dam is located,is prone to tremors and the construction may be too old to withstand major quakes.
But the Tamil Nadu government on Thursday dismissed the tremors as negligible. It said earthquakes have been a common phenomenon around the Mullaperiyar dam area from 1819 to 2005. There have been 76 instances of tremor in a span of 186 years, it said.
Arguing that the reported tremors are below 3.5 in the Richter Scale,its application stated that Kerala has been spreading the false propaganda of 22 tremors in the last four months resulting in the dam being unsafe… without any basis.
The application contends that the protests by Keralas political leadership is not out of a bona fide action actuated by any genuine concern with regard to the safety of the existing dam,but an attempt to deprive the state of Tamil Nadu of the right to the waters of the Mullaperiyar dam under the 1886 Agreement,as ratified by the supplemental Agreements of 1970.
The application said the agitations and political pressure from the neighbour state was regardless of the fact that an empowered committee appointed by the Supreme Court is looking into the water controversy and safety aspect.
When this court is seized of the entire matter including the safety of the existing dam,it is most inappropriate for the state of Kerala,through its Chief Minister and others,to make strongly worded statements to the effect that a new dam is the only solution, it said.
Mullaperiyar dam has been fully strengthened and is as good as a new dam, the application added,referring to the March 2001 report by the Ministry of Water Resources-led Expert Committee in this regard.
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