Nitin Gadkari meets Tamil Nadu CM Palaniswami on Cauvery water war

Union minister for water resources, Nitin Gadkari on Thursday announces a meeting with the different chief minister to tackle the water problems in southern part of India.

The southern part of India specially Tamilnadu and Karnataka are in ‘water war’ and several reports of violence have been observed on the issue of Cauvery water sharing. The river Cauvery is an important source of water to both of the states and a huge number of farmers depends directly on Cauvery for the irrigation. The two other stakeholder Kerala and Pondicherry are also the party in water distribution. However, the river facing acute water shortage.

To deal with water scarcity in the south, surplus water from the Godavari may soon be the channeled into the Cauvery and meeting of Chief ministers of different states will be held in this regard to chalk out a strategy, reports THE NEWS MINUTE

Gadkari held a review meeting with Tamil Nadu chief minister Edapaddi Palaniswami in Chennai on 23^rd November and briefed reporters about the two river-linking projects. He said it would provide relief to the states with water shortage.

“My ministry has decided to transfer surplus water from Godavari river to Krishna, to Pennar river (Karnataka) and finally to Cauvery. We will prepare the technical proposals and invite the four CMs (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Telangana) to get their consent.”

Several Indian states are under drought due to less waterfall and depleting underground water. The water shortage is also one reason asserted behind the severe ongoing agrarian crisis in rural India which has caused thousands of lives of farmers.

The water shortage is a national problem and Union minister has initiated two proposals to ensure lasting solution against the water scarcity.

“We will treat these projects as national projects because this is a river connectivity project….and 90 percent of the project cost will be borne by Government of India and remaining 10 percent by state governments,” said Nitin Gadkari.