A day after a dawn-to-dusk bandh was observed in Karnataka to protest Tamil Nadu’s opposition to Mekedatu drinking water project across the river Cauvery, NDA constituent PMK on Sunday said all political parties in the state should bury their differences over it and that the ruling AIADMK hold an all-party meeting on the issue.
“Though the Cauvery issue is a serious livelihood issue for Tamil Nadu, the ruling party and government seem to have other serious problems and hence do not want to agitate against Karnataka,” PMK leader S Ramadoss said.
“It is important that political parties in Tamil Nadu forget their differences and unite under one umbrella for this issue. The Tamil Nadu government should convene an all-party meeting to discuss it,” he said.
A resolution against construction of the dam should be passed at the all-party meet, he said and added that the Chief Minister should lead a delegation to Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and submit a memorandum in this regard.
Referring to the protests in both states for and against the dam, he said the bandh in Karnataka was a ‘huge success’ as it had the state government’s backing.
It was not so in Tamil Nadu as the state government did not endorse it, he said.
“This epitomises the differences in the ways Tamil Nadu and Karnataka governments approached the Cauvery issue,” he said.
The project envisages building a balancing reservoir across Cauvery near Mekedatu to to generate power and supply drinking water to Bengaluru and its neighbouring districts, to which Tamil Nadu is opposed, seeing it as detrimental to its interests.
On March 27, the Tamil Nadu Assembly had adopted a unanimous resolution, urging the Centre to rein in Karnataka from going ahead with its plan to build the dam across the inter-state river.
Farmers’ bodies, supported by opposition parties, had called for a state-wide bandh in Tamil Nadu on the issue the following day.
