A team of central government officials on Friday will visit the Cauvery basin in Mandya district, about 80 kms from here, where the Krishna Raja Sagar (KRS) dam is situated, to assess water availability in the Cauvery River and Karnataka’s requirement in the wake of the intensifying agitation against the release of its water to Tamil Nadu.
The team arrived here on Thursday. The team will tour the command areas and assess the position starting tomorrow, before leaving for Bangalore on October 7.
The team members are chief engineer Jacob from Bangalore who is the team leader, New Delhi’s CWC Director B P Pandey, Union Agriculture Ministry’s Deputy Commissioner P K Saha and Bangalore's Jala Soudha Director (Monitoring) D Ranga Reddy.
They will begin the tour from Maddur and inspection of KRS command area and will visit KRS apart from K R Pet and Pandavapura to assess Hemagiri, Mandagere and Hemavathi anicut command, a press release said.
Next day they will inspect the Kabini atchkat (command area).
The team's assessment will help the Cauvery River Authority (CRA) headed by the Prime Minister to decide whether to accept Karnataka's plea to allow it stop releasing more water to Tamil Nadu.
Karnataka has been releasing 9,000 cusecs of water daily since September 29 on the directive of the Supreme Court after Karnataka declined to accept the CRA order to release water from September 20 to October 15.
For the past five days, farmers from Mandya and Mysore districts have been protesting against the release of 9,000 cusecs of water from the KRS dam to Tamil Nadu. They launched a relay hunger strike on Thursday, a day after their attempt to lay siege to KRS was foiled by police.
Demonstrations continued for the fifth day in Mandya and neighboring Mysore and Chamarajanagar districts, and Bangalore where a group of farmers tried to lay siege to Raj Bhavan, the governor's residence.
Road traffic between Bangalore and Mysore was disrupted for several hours for the fifth day on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the four-day-old Cauvery agitation took a political turn with Mysore district Congress party leaders entering the fray at Mysore on Thursday.
All political parties in the state, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Congress and Janata Dal-Secular, are opposed to water release on the ground that Karnataka is hit by worst drought in 40 years and water in the reservoirs in the Cauvery basin is barely adequate to meet the state's requirement.
On Thursday leader of the opposition in the assembly Siddaramaiah of the Congress started a 'padayatra' (march) from Mysore to Mandya, a distance of 50 kms, in support of the agitating farmers in Mandya.
They marched on foot up to the Mysore-Bangalore tollgate and from there they went to Mandya, which remained cut off from movement of vehicles between Mysore-Bangalore for the fifth day, in vehicles.
Mysore city saw a series of protests, besides that of the Congress. Advocates of the Mysore Bar Association boycotted courts and held a human chain opposite the Law Court building at the Gandhiji statue condemning the state government and the Centre for their decision on Cauvery water release. They raised slogans and the Bar Association leaders addressed the members, while police had diverted traffic on that road.
They have decided to continue their protests and boycott of courts for the next three days too and back the State-wide bundh on October. 6.
Hundreds of students of a number of educational institutions held a rally and staged dharna in front of the Deputy Commissioner's office.
Members of the Chamarajanagar Janata Dal (S) unit detained the Chamarajanagar-bound train at the Chamarajapuram Railway Station premises for a few minutes.
