The Netravathi Rakshana Samyutka Samiti, an action committee of organisations fighting against the Yettinahole project, on Friday urged the government to constitute a Netravathi River Authority to ensure rights of the people over the Netravathi waters.
The samiti said that if the government did not respond to their demand, people in Dakshina Kannada would be forced to demand Statehood.
The samiti, which opened its office on the premises of Arya Samaj at Balmatta on Friday, decided to hold a convention of people of Dakshina Kannada in the city soon to continue pressuring the government to drop the project.
Addressing a meeting, S.G. Mayya, a former professor of Hydraulics and Applied Mechanics at the National Institute of Technology – Karnataka (NIT-K), Mangaluru, said that the people of Dakshina Kannada had rights over the Netravathi waters. The government should not deny the rights by going ahead with Yettinahole diversion project or the Netravathi diversion project. The government should ensure the rights by constituting the authority, he said.
Supporting the demand for a separate State as the government had ignored the concerns of the people of Dakshina Kannada over the on-going project, Mr. Mayya said that it was time for all to raise the demand.
Once the State was formed, a tribunal would have to be constituted to decide about sharing of the Netravathi waters. It would become an inter-State issue like sharing the Cauvery waters between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The meeting supported the demand for a separate State. Mr. Mayya alleged that the government was going ahead with an irrigation project by projecting Yettinahole diversion as a drinking water project.
K. Vijaya Kumar Shetty, former Congress MLA and president of Karavali Jeevanadi Netravathi Rakshana Samiti, which has questioned the project in the National Green Tribunal, alleged that the project was nothing but a “money-making project.”
He alleged that certain vested interests were behind it and promoting it for reasons relating to elections.
Dinesh Holla, an activist and a convener of Sahyadri Sanchaya, said that through Yettinahole project the government was making inroads into taking up G.S. Paramashivaiah Committee Report recommendations.
According to the committee, water from all west-flowing rivers would be lifted for supplying it to parched districts.
