TN to move SC on Mullaiperiyar issue

Chennai, Mar 16: The Tamil Nadu Government will challenge in the Supreme Court the amendments made to the Kerala Irrigation and Water Conservation Act, 2003, on raising the storage level in Mullaiperiyar Dam.

The Kerala Assembly had yesterday unanimously passed a Bill amending the law to retain the water level in Mullaiperiyar Dam at 136 ft, in the wake of the Supreme Court order allowing Tamil Nadu to raise the level to 142 ft.

Alleging that the whole exercise of the Kerala Government was to nullify the orders of the court, an official release here said Tamil Nadu would ask the Apex Court to direct the Kerala Government to implement in toto the orders passed by it on February 27.

''In order to safeguard the interests of the farmers of Tamil Nadu and to ensure that the orders of the Supreme Court in raising the level of the Mullaiperiyar Dam from the temporarily brought down level of 136 ft to 142 ft and to carrying out further strengthening measures, the State Government had decided to move the Supreme Court to challenge the amendment,'' the release added.

The Bill attempted to restrict the full reservoir level of the dam by showing it as 136 ft, it said and added that the full reservoir level of the dams included in the Schedule to the Bill could be increased only on obtaining an order in writing from the Dam Safety Authority constituted under the Kerala Irrigation and Water Conservation Act, 2003.

Meanwhile, DMK President M Karunanidhi sought the intervention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to uphold the Supreme Court's verdict and ''avoid unnecessary confrontation with the judiciary.'' In a letter to Dr Singh, a copy of which was released to the press here, he recalled the Supreme Court, on a petition originally filed by the DMK Government in 1998, had passed an order that the storage level in the Mullaiperiyar dam should be raised from 136 ft to 142 ft.

''The DMK and the people of Tamil Nadu have been demanding the rise in the storage level for a very long period'', he said and added that the Kerala Government's legislation was aimed at circumventing the Apex Court order on the issue.

''The move (of the Kerala Government) will amount to a direct confrontation between the legislature and the judiciary. This will also be construed as an attempt to assault the federal concept and national integration,'' Mr Karunanidhi said in his letter.

UNI