Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly Siddaramaiah and the former Water Resources Minister H.K. Patil on Wednesday charged the Jagadish Shettar government with committing serious mistakes and failure to take steps to solve Cauvery water crisis.
Mr. Siddaramaiah, who released a brochure “2012-Cauvery Lapse: the facts”, brought out by Mr. Patil, told presspersons here that the Ministers and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders were trying to pass the buck to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rather than working towards solving the crisis.
Condemning the statement by Deputy Chief Minister K.S. Eshwarappa, who called Dr. Singh an agent of Tamil Nadu for ordering Karnataka to release 9,000 cusecs of water, the Congress leader said that this was unbecoming of the stature he held. Mr. Patil said that Mr. Shettar should have written to his Tamil Nadu counterpart seeking her cooperation on the issue, met NDA/BJP leaders such as L.K. Advani and explained the position, explained the situation in the State to the media, worked out strategies — asking organisations like water consumer cooperative societies across the State to file petitions before the Supreme Court, resort to cloud seeding, take steps to save water and seeking the intervention of Union Ministers to influence the Prime Minister.
