With Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami making it known officially on Friday that the water scarcity in Tamil Nadu is grave, travellers to Chennai are advised to keep away from the city which is reeling under severe drought.
Speaking to the media at Fort Saint George after a Cabinet meeting on Friday, the Chief Minister said all reservoirs supplying drinking water to the metropolis have gone dry.
“There is not a single drop of water in these reservoirs which are the main sources of drinking water to Chennai. Efforts are on to source water from quarries around Chennai to meet the drinking water requirements of the capital city,” said Palaniswami.
The Chief Minister also said his Government has made arrangements for transporting 10 million litres water per day from Jolarpettai to Chennai for six weeks and an amount of Rs 65 crore has been set apart for the operation. Jolarpettai in Vellore district is 213 km south of Chennai.
Palaniswami disclosed that the Kerala Government was obstructing the State’s efforts to increase the height of Mullaperiyar Dam. He said that though the Kerala Government has offered to supply 2 million litres of water to Tamil Nadu, it was negligible compared to the requirement of the State, which stands at 525 million litres per day.
Even as the Tamil Nadu Government is struggling to find a solution to the water scarcity, the Opposition DMK has launched a Statewide agitation condemning the AIADMK’s failure to resolve the issue. “The responsibility for the present state of affairs rests only with the AIADMK Government. The DMK alone could find a permanent solution to the water scarcity haunting Tamil Nadu,” said MK Stalin, president, DMK.
But the BJP said it was the right time for Stalin to prove his responsibility towards Tamil Nadu by making Karnataka to release the 9.19 TMC ft Cauvery water as ordered by the Cauvery Water Management Authority on May 28. “It was Stalin, who proposed the name of Rahul Gandhi as the Prime Ministerial candidate. The Congress also considers Stalin as the true successor of former DMK chief Karunanidhi. A word from Stalin is sufficient to make Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy to release the Cauvery water due to Tamil Nadu,” said Narayanan Thiruppathy, BJP’s senior spokesman.
Many residents have started leaving the city to their native towns.
N Abhijit, a corporate executive, who had set up his house in the metropolis, said he was leaving for Kozhikode in Kerala because of water scarcity. “I have not seen this kind of situation during the last two decades of my stay in Chennai. The present scenario is most unbecoming of Chennai,” said Abhijit who has been waiting for his quota of 10,000 litres of truck water for the last seven days.
The words of Dr Nanditha Krishna, director, CPR Environment Centre sum up the present day Chennai.
“There is genuine urban suffering, which is often worse than rural suffering as women have to climb three to four floors with water buckets. The Government wanted to delay the opening of schools in the city so that children who had gone to their villages for the summer holidays could delay their return. The DMK raised such brouhaha that the Government opened the schools on May 3 as originally envisaged. This has increased the water drought since schools consume a large amount of water. Now, even if you have the money, water tankers are hardly available. If you order one today, you may get it after 2 weeks,” said Dr Krishna.