PM assures Karuna on Cauvery water

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured DMK President M Karunanidhi that he would take the initiative and see that Tamil Nadu gets its due share of Cauvery water from Karnataka.

Singh gave this assurance to Karunanidhi during a telephonic conversation held with the latter this morning, a DMK press release said.The release quoted the prime minister saying that the Centre would immediately take steps to solve the Cauvery river water dispute.

He told Karunanidhi that the DPA delegation, led by DMK General Secretary K Anbazhagan, which called on him on July 25, had handed over a letter written by the DMK chief on the Cauvery issue.Karunanidhi thanked the prime minister for taking immediate steps on the issue, the release said.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa claimed that it had become a practice for the Karnataka government to release only "excess" water when it was unable to store water any more in all its dams."If Karnataka had released water on a weekly basis from the first week of June, as directed by the tribunal in its interim award, the state would have opened the Mettur dam for irrigation on June 12 to enable farmers raise the kuruvai (short term) paddy crop.

This could not be done even this year," she said, adding, it was still "not too late", and if Karnataka released Tamil Nadu's share, sowing operations could soon be started in the Cauvery delta area.

"The meeting with the prime minister yesterday did not satisfy us. He neither gave any assurance to us nor directed Karnataka to release water immediately, despite my updating him with facts and figures on the present storage of water in Karnataka dams," the chief minister said.