As Karnataka is planning to construct a dam across Thenpennar, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has sought Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s intervention to stop the project.
Responding to a calling attention motion, PWD Minister K.V. Ramalingam said the Chief Minister had also asked the Prime Minister to ensure that Karnataka was not allowed to implement any project without the knowledge of Tamil Nadu.
The calling attention motion was moved by DMK members N. Eramakrishnan, E.V. Velu, T. Senguttuvan, CPI member T. Ramachandran, CPI(M) member Dillibabu and PMK member A. Ganeshkumar.
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The Minister said the river flowing through Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri, Tiruvannamalai, Villupuram and Cudallore irrigated four lakh acres in Tamil Nadu.
“Karnataka government has decided to divert the water from the river to 160 lakes in the state. When Tamil Nadu got wind of the project, it informed Karnataka that it could not go ahead with its plan without Tamil Nadu’s nod since it was an inter-state river,” he said.
Mr Ramalingam said Chief Minister Jayalalithaa first wrote a letter to Prime Minister on May 19, 2012, telling him that Karnataka’s effort was completely in violation of the Madras-Mysore Agreement signed in 1892.
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She again wrote a letter on March 27, 2013, saying that the construction of the dam would affect the flow of water in the river and in turn, would affect the irrigation in the State.
He said that the State government had constituted a committee headed by the Water Resources Department Superintendent Engineer to monitor Karnataka’s dam construction activities.