The Cauvery Rights Protection Forum has planned to burn copies of the Karnataka Budget proposals that envisage Rs. 25 crore for constructing reservoirs across Cauvery at Mekedatu. The stir is slated to conducted across the delta districts on April 4.
He told presspersons here on Monday, the forum Chief Coordinator P. Maniyarasan wanted the Centre to invoke Article 355 to rein in the intransigent and illegal activities of the Karnataka Government that threw to winds all orders and rulings of the Supreme Court and the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal.
The Centre had the powers to order the Karnataka Government to stop forthwith its all illegal activities that impinge on the rights of the Cauvery delta people and Tamil Nadu. Including the construction of the reservoir across the Cauvery without getting the sanction of the Union Environment Ministry, allocating Rs. 25 crore in the first phase for its preliminary works militated against the Constitution.
The silence of the Centre, without taking any action against the errant Karnataka regime, gave rise to fears among the people here whether the Centre was hand in glove with the upper riparian State, Mr. Maniyarasan said.
The attitude of the BJP and the Congress units in Tamil Nadu and their paying lip service to the cause of farmers here was condemnable as they could apply pressure though their national leadership for protecting the genuine rights of the Tamil Nadu people, he added.
To protest against the State government allocating Rs. 25 crore for the project, to impress upon the Centre to invoke Article 355 against Karnataka and to immediately form the Cauvery Management Board, the forum has planned to burn copies of the Karnataka Budget in Tiruchi, Thanjavur, Tiruvarur, Nagapattinam, and Chidambaram on April 4, Mr. Maniyarasan said.
Meanwhile, in Tiruvarur the district coordinator of the Forum Dhanabalan and Cauvery Aycut Farmers’ Association organiser Cheran Tamil National Front district president Bharathi Selvan, Tamil Desiya Periyakkam leader Govindasamy met to discuss the stir strategy, and announced that the protest burning of Karnataka budget copies would be held on April 4 following which they would meet Tamil Nadu Parliamentarians to impress on them the need to prevent the reservoirs. If they fail to stop the project, then the MPs must come forward to quit, they said.
