Friday saw farmers in the Cauvery Delta of Tamil Nadu lunching a novel agitation against Karnataka for not releasing water from Cauvery river.
More than 500 farmers drawn from Tiruchirappalli, Thiruvarur, Cuddalore and Nagapattinam, the districts which constitute Cauvery Delta and for whom the Cauvery river is the lifeline, rode to Hogenakkal, the border town between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka with begging bowls and pleaded with their Karnataka counterparts to release the water for the Samba crop cultivation.
Almost 50 per cent of the Samba crop (the 120-day long crop cultivated in the month of October) is getting ruined this year because of the decision by Karnataka Government not to release water to the Mettur Dam in Tamil Nadu, charged Ponnuchami Ayyakannu, the 69-year-old leader of the farming community in the delta districts. “According to the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal verdict, Karnataka is bound to release 98 TMC ft water during the January to September period. But this year Karnataka has released just 35 tmcft water,” Ayyakannu told The Pioneer over phone from Hogenakkal, where Cauvery enters Tamil Nadu from Karnataka.
He further alleged the Centre was not taking any step for the constitution of the Cauvery Management Board as per the award of the CWDT in 2007. “We do not know anything other than farming and this could be done only if Karnataka releases the water,” said Ayyakannu, who heads an organisation by name National South Indian River Inter linking Farmers Association. He claimed more than 2,00,000 farmers are members of the association.
Along with the march with begging bowls, Ayyakanu and other farmers said they would soon file a writ petition in the Supreme Court requesting for the reorganisation of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu based on river Cauvery. “Had the States were reorganised based on the rivers, we would not have faced this situation. It is only because we are in Tamil Nadu that the Karnataka Government is refusing to release the Cauvery waters. If we were in Karnataka, this issue would not have been there,” said Ayyakannu.
Though the farmers returned from Hogenakkal with empty bowls after the two-hour long protest, they are hopeful that the Supreme Court would not send them back disappointed this time. “No other States in the country face this kind of problem where the legally entitled water is denied by the upper riparian State,” said Ayyakannu.