'Centre ready to intervene if required on Cauvery row'

Bengaluru, Sep 12: Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti on Saturday said if required, the Centre will intervene in the Cauvery water release issue to Tamil Nadu.

She told reporters that the Centre will do justice to all and will also protect the interest of all states.

Earlier, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention to resolve the issue.

Karnataka Water Resources Minister M B Patil rejected the demand for changing the state’s legal team headed by Fali S Nariman.

“The Nariman-led team always worked hard to protect Karnataka's interest in the courts in inter-state water disputes. So, there is no question of replacing them,” he said. The minister was reacting to a demand from some quarters to replace the legal team for “failing to protect the interests of state” in the Cauvery issue.

The Karnataka legal team said, “There is nothing like winning or losing the case in water disputes. Every decision has some good and some bad parts.”

“We must know that primarily, the legal team is fighting the upper riparian's case which is an uphill task in courts because, the general perception in the world is that the upper riparian state can ruin the lower state by building dams or barrages and steal water. Despite this general bias, this legal team succeeded in reducing the liability to Tamil Nadu from 380 tmcft to 192 tmcft annually in Cauvery. We hope to reduce it further in the Supreme Court in the pending civil appeal,” Mohan Katarki, member of the legal team said in a statement.

“Karnataka could not have argued that we won't share water with Tamil Nadu or we don't owe any water to Tamil Nadu. The only point was - how much we owe to Tamil Nadu and when we owe. We said, what we owe should be determined by the Supervisory Committee and until it determines this, we propose, as a goodwill gesture, to ensure 10,000 cusecs for 10 days when already, on an average, 6,000 cusecs were going. It was a wise proposal and when the same proposal was made in September 2012, the Supreme Court had accepted it and everyone, including those who are taunting the legal team now, praised it,” he said.