Ahead of the crucial Cauvery River Authority (CRA) meeting, to be convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and attended by chief ministers of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry in New Delhi on Wednesday, Mandya witnessed a series of protests on Tuesday.
The CRA meeting would decide on Tamil Nadu’s demand for 40 tmcft of Cauvery water.
JD(S) youth wing members, led by state vice-president Ashok Jairam and former MLC K T Srikante Gowda, took out a “semi-nude” procession on the busy Bangalore-Mysore highway. They urged the Prime Minister to address the issue seriously, taking the plight of the farmers in the Cauvery basin into consideration.
Meanwhile, LIC agents and sugarcane growers, attached to Mysugar factory, joined the week-long protests and dharna at Silver Jubilee Park here.
Several leaders, including Cauvery River Protection Committee chairman G Made Gowda, MP N Chaluvarayanaswamy, former Union minister and actor Ambareesh, former ministers P M Narendraswamy and M S Athmananda, and MLAs Suresh Gowda, M Srinivas, C S Puttaraju, Kalpana Siddaraju and Ramesh Babu participated in the dharna.
Srikante Gowda said if Tamil Nadu’s demand for 40 tmcft of water was accepted Karnataka would be left with less than 23 tmcft of water in its reservoirs. Tamil Nadu had three more months of monsoon while Karnataka had no hopes for better rains as the season had come to an end, he said.
Gowda urged External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, former chief minister M Veerappa Moily and others in the Union Cabinet to properly apprise the Prime Minister of the situation prevailing in Karnataka.
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