Team winds up assessment of Cauvery basin in TN delta districts

Chennai, Oct 11: The high-level technical team constituted by the Supreme Court on the Cauvery issue today held discussions with the Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary, as it wrapped up its two-day assessment of the Cauvery basin in the state's Delta districts.

The team, led by Central Water Commission Chairman GS Jha, held discussions with Chief Secretary P Ramamohana Rao and Public Works Department Principal Secretary SK Prabakar.

Jha later told reporters that the team was in the process of processing the data collected in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and analysing them. It would submit its report in the Supreme Court on or before October 17.

He thanked both the states "for nicely organising the visit and sharing the information so that we can be able to assess the ground realities in a very feasible manner."

Asked if Tamil Nadu had putforth any demand in today's meeting, he replied in the negative. "There is no demand as such and we have not tried to put things in the demand and release manner. We will be just assessing the ground realities," he said.

"Of course, the utilisation part will also be there; availability and utilisation, so you may say that the demand will be in the form what is the utilisation, what can be the best utilisation possible," he added.

Asked what the state farmers had told them, Jha said they had presented a memorandum in Tamil and that officials here have been asked to translate it and "distribute among members so that we can look (into it) before we embark on writing the report."

Farmers of the Cauvery delta region had on Monday told the team that they were incurring a loss of around Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 2,500 crore each year due to the Cauvery dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

The team was formed by the Supreme Court to assess the situation in the Cauvery basin in both the states. It had already visited Karnataka last week.

PTI