Educationalist discloses expenditure on Cauvery case

Chennai, July 17 (UNI) The Tamil Nadu government had spent a whopping Rs 25 crore towards fees for lawyers, while fighting its case before the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) and the Supreme court in the last 15 years.

Talking to newspersons here, Mr T D Naidu, a self proclaimed Educationalist, said he had obtained the details of the amount paid for the lawyers from the State Government under the Right to Information (RTI) Act and demanded that the government come out with a white paper on the amount so far spent on the Cauvery case.

The government had informed him that the fees to the advocates and hotel expenses were met from the overall budget provision of the Public Works Department, he said, adding the expenditure included an additional Rs 2.29 crore, spent towards conferences of advocates held in hotels.

''Altogether, more than Rs 25 crore has been spent for a futile exercise,'' he said and pointed out that for every hearing before the tribunal, atleast 10 officials from the Public Works Department visited Delhi from the city.

The cumulative expenses of the visit, their stay and other expenses were, however, not included in the expenditure, he said.

Claiming that he was raising the issue as a responsible citizen of the country, Mr Naidu asked as to why should the government pay exorbitant fees to the laywers, when its advocates in High Court and the Supreme Court were being paid only Rs 1,000 per day.

''It is really a sorry state of affairs that when farmers in the Cauvery delta did not have two square meals a day, the government should have spent so much towards laywer's fees alone,'' he said.

Senior lawyer C S Vaidyanathan had been paid a total fee of Rs 6.07 crore followed by Mr A K Ganguly (Rs 4.08 crore), Mr C Paramasivam (Rs 2.64 crore) and Mr G Umapathy (Rs 2.54 crore), Mr V Krishnamurthy (Rs 1.39 crore), Mr R Muthukumarasamy (Rs 1.03 crore) and Mr K Parasaran (Rs 91.69 lakh), he said.

After spending so much of money, the Cauvery water problem still remained unresolved, he said and declared that he would take appropriate legal action against the government after consulting his laywers.

UNI