On Wednesday, farmer unions protested the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee’s (CWRC) decision to release 5,000 cusecs of river water per day into Tamil Nadu for 15 days in Mandya, Karnataka.
Dharshan Puttannaiah, an Independent MLA, joined the farmers. He expressed displeasure over the CWRC’s decision despite having the approval of Congress and declared that the protests would last all night.
‘We are protesting against the decision to release 5,000 cusecs of water from the river Cauvery daily. There is a meeting on Friday and we have to wait and watch what will happen next. They should release water based on facts,’ Puttannaiah said.
Farmers countered that the government had misread the circumstances when they announced the flow of River Cauvery water into Tamil Nadu. Near the Krishna Raja Sagara (KRS) dam, protests were held.
They asked that the water release be halted right away and issued a threat to keep protesting until the water flow was stopped.
Members of the Bhoo Tayi Horata Samiti and farmers both demonstrated on the Bengaluru-Mysore highway.
Karnataka’s deputy chief minister, DK Shivakumar, defended the CWRC’s judgement by stating that it mandated the delivery of 5,000 cusecs of water daily even though Tamil Nadu had asked the release of 24,000 cusecs daily.
‘Our people have fought it vigorously. We have explained our situation (to the CWRC). The technical committee too presented the case. Our officers too have explained the exact situation,’ he told reporters in Mysuru.
He promised to speak with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah about the current circumstances, and he has already spoken with officers. According to him, due to lower rainfall, Karnataka’s daily water release request was cut from 10,000 cusecs to 5,000 cusecs.
The overall storage capacity of the four dams in Karnataka is 114.571 tmc ft (thousand million cubic feet), and it has 93.535 tmc ft storage, which is around 82 per cent, according to prior remarks by Tamil Nadu Water Resources Minister Duraimurugan.
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