Within hours after congratulating and complimenting BS Yeddyurappa for winning the Karnataka Assembly election and requesting him to release the due share of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, MK Stalin, the working president of the DMK, did a volte-face and described the former’s win as the murder of democracy.
In a message posted in his social media page, Stalin, had congratulated Yeddyurappa and asked him to give Tamil Nadu its due share of Cauvery river waters. Interestingly, this is the first time Stalin is asking a Karnataka leader to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. But by Thursday morning, the DMK scion changed his stance and came down heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the newly sworn-in Chief Minister Yeddyurappa and the BJP.
“The elevation of Yeddyurappa as Chief Minister was akin to the murder of democracy and the Prime Minister was supporting it from New Delhi,” Stalin told reporters on Thursday. Political commentators in Tamil Nadu described the change in his stance as hypocrisy.
“This is nothing but sheer political hypocrisy and double standard of the highest order,” said M S N Nithyanand, Tamil Nadu’s eminent political commentator and observer. “I have never come across an instance where the DMK or the Congress leaders in Tamil Nadu asking the Karnataka Chief Minister or the Congress leaders in that State to release Cauvery water.
Cauvery is a weapon for the political parties in Tamil Nadu. They do not want a permanent solution to the issue,” said Nithyanand.
G Satyamurthy, veteran scribe and a chronicler of the Cauvery legal battle between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, said Stalin or for that matter the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president S Thirunaakarassar has never opened their mouth even once in front of the Karnataka Chief Minister or the Congress leaders for Cauvery Water. “Don’t you feel that this issue could have been resolved if the Congress President Rahul Gandhi or his mother Sonia Gandhi had given a direction to the Karnataka Government to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu,” asked Satyamurthy.
According to Nithyanand, the DMK or the Congress were yet to reply to the questions posed by him about their inactions in implementing the Cauvery River Water Dispute Tribunal order in 2007. “The DMK was ruling Tamil Nadu and was the crucial ally of the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre from 2004 to 2013. It did nothing to pressurize the then Central Government to notify the tribunal order in the government gazette,” pointed out Nithyanand.
Nithyanand aslo pointed out that no purpose would be served by the DMK’s demand for holding an all-party meeting to force the centre to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.