Cauvery issue: Deve Gowda urges Modi to form committee

Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda on Monday appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to direct the Jal Shakti Ministry to appoint an external agency, independent of the states that are party to the dispute and the union government, to conduct studies of all reservoirs in the Cauvery basin.

He also stressed the need to have an appropriate distress formula applicable to all the states concerned, in such distress conditions.

Noting that due to the failure of the Southwest monsoon (from June to September) this year, there is insufficient storage in the identified/designated four reservoirs of the Cauvery basin in Karnataka, he said the state is facing such a grave situation that it is finding it extremely difficult even to cater to the drinking water requirements, let alone for irrigation.

The Janata Dal (S) supremo released a copy of the September 23 letter that he wrote to the Prime Minister on issues of "resolving the ongoing disputes and differences between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in the matter of releasing Cauvery waters from Karnataka reservoirs to Tamil Nadu", at a press conference here.

Deve Gowda said that the combined storage available as on September 23 in all four reservoirs of the Cauvery basin in Karnataka is only 51.10 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) whereas the requirement for standing crops and for drinking water is of 112 TMC.

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