Govt for pro-active steps in Cauvery issue

With the Supreme Court likely to settle all the pending suits over Cauvery river water dispute by the year end, the government is planning to take pro-active steps to ensure the state is not denied its due share.

Addressing a press conference, Karnataka Law Minister T B Jayachandra said: "We want to remain a step ahead of the Tamil Nadu and ensure that Karnataka gets a favourable court decision on the issue. I have decided to personally attend the Supreme Court proceedings whenever needed."

He said everything will depend on good monsoon and it looked like, after Congress took over in the state, the monsoon was going to be good though reports suggested that it would arrive a few days late. The minister also said water sharing in Cauvery, Krishna, Godavari, Palar and Pennar would be top priority for the new government in the state. The government would soon come out with a master plan to ensure utilisation of the State's share of waters from all these rivers.

"We have been allotted less water than what we need from Cauvery while we are lucky that we got excess in Krishna. We need to complete all pending irrigation projects, especially in Krishna basin, and this is the reason why Congress said in its election manifesto that it will spend Rs 10,000 crore for water projects," he explained.

Jayachandra said the assembly session will commence on May 29 and Malikayya Guttedar had been appointed as pro-tem Speaker of the Assembly and the notification would be issued later today. The government had also appointed senior advocate and noted constitutional expert Ravivarma Kumar as the next Advocate General of Karnataka, he said. The house will elect the new speaker on May 31. Veteran Congress leader Kagodu Thimmappa will be the new speaker. The governor H R Bhardwaj will address the joint session of the state legislature on June 3, 2013, he added.