Southern States - Karnataka

Bheema water: Govt. urged to move SC

By Our Special Correspondent

Bangalore April 29. The former Prime Minister, and MP, H.D. Deve Gowda, has urged the State Government to file a petition in the Supreme Court, with Maharashtra and the Centre as respondents, seeking the release of water from the Ujjini Dam to ensure drinking water to people living in villages bordering Maharashtra.

He told presspersons here today that the Supreme Court, in response to a petition by the Bheema River Protection Committee, had held that an organisation could not involve another State as a respondent, particularly in inter-State disputes. "Hence it is imperative for the State Government to file a petition in the interests of the people of around 140 villages on the banks of the Bheema in Karnataka who have been deprived of even drinking water, leave alone water for irrigation."

Mr. Deve Gowda said the Ujjini Dam was so designed that it had a dead storage of around 60 tmcft. It was from this quantity that at least 1,000 cusecs could be released everyday between January and May to meet the drinking water requirement of the 140 villages. The Bheema had dried up downstream in Karnataka following the construction of the Ujjini Dam. "It is possibly the only dam in the world which has such a massive dead storage capacity. The design is so faulty that the 60 tmcft. of water can never be put to any use."

He said he had written a detailed letter to the Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, and the Minister for Water Resources, H.K. Patil, calling upon them to ensure that the State Government filed a petition in the apex court. The next hearing on the petition filed by the Bheema River Protection Committee was scheduled for May 6 and the State Government could file its opinion before the apex court by that date. The Supreme Court had also sought the views of the State Government and the Centre on the petition filed by the Bheema River Protection Committee.

He said that according to the national water policy guidelines prepared when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister, all the States had unanimously agreed that water should be released for drinking water purposes irrespective of a river water dispute between two or more States. Thus, Maharashtra was obliged to release water from the Ujjini Dam.

Asked for his reaction to the Veeresh Committee report which went into the suicide by farmers, the former Prime Minister said the report should be rejected by the State Government, particularly since it had categorically said that the main reason for suicide was alcoholism. "It is apparent that the committee has not gone into the ground realities which push farmers to suicide."

Mr. Deve Gowda said the suicide by farmers was due to various factors, including the burden of loans, poor prices for agricultural produce, lack of appropriate marketing support from the Government, the role of the middlemen, and the manner in which farmers obtained loans even before harvesting the crop, poor quality of seeds and other agricultural inputs, including pesticides, etc.

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