Immediately form Cauvery Management Board: Jayalalithaa to Modi

Terming a memorandum submitted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by Karnataka as "full of distorted facts", Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa Friday urged him to order the immediaste formation of a Cauvery Management Board and a Cauvery Water Regulation Committee.

In a letter to Modi Friday, text of which was released to the media here, Jayalalithaa said: "The memorandum submitted to you by the chief minister of Karnataka, I reiterate, is full of misleading statements and distorted facts."

She said Karnataka's memorandum was replete with prevarication and misleading statements and was aimed at making the final order of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal itself nugatory.

Tracing the legal dispute between the two states over sharing the Cauvery waters, Jayalalithaa said Karnataka did not honour the interim award of the tribunal.

She said the tribunal's order was equivalent to the orders of the Supreme Court.

Referring to the notification of the tribunal's final order in the official gazette of the Indian government, Jayalalithaa said the centre cannot rest with that but has the constitutional duty and responsibility to constitute Cauvery Management Board and Cauvery Water Regulation Committee.

"I would also like to bring to your kind notice that the constitution of the Cauvery Management Board is not optional but an integral part of the final order itself, which has been notified.

"Therefore, as a natural corollary and as an extension of the notification, the Cauvery Management Board should have been formed by the erstwhile Congress-led UPA central government," she said.

"However, the erstwhile Congress-led Central government dragged its feet for political considerations and did not form the Cauvery Management Board until it demitted office," Jayalalithaa added.