Cauvery dispute not an "insurmountable" problem: Haasan

Makkal Needhi Maiam founder and actor Kamal Haasan today said the Cauvery dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka was not an "insurmountable problem," and that politics was impeding a solution.

"It is not such an insurmountable problem. If politics will just stand aside, logic will come in place, logistics will come in place, then we can quickly solve the problem," the veteran actor said.

He claimed that if the issue was "left to actual users," like farmers, a solution could emerge.

"It is seems like people are driving it (the issue), they are not. It can be solved, but it has to be left to actual users," he said at a special session of industry body Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry's National Executive Committee Meeting.

"Politics is meddling with it. Too many cooks are spoiling the river but what we can do best in such situation is conserve water," he said.

"It is boring for the onlookers because we know why it is going wrong....it is pure politics and it should move away from that and come towards the people," he added.

The actor-politician called for conserving water and cited the case of the highly polluted Cooum river in Chennai to drive home his point.

Haasan, however, said that "we will have to fight for our rights and we will," on the Cauvery dispute.

The Supreme Court had on February 16 asked the Centre to formulate a scheme to ensure compliance of its judgement on the decades-old Cauvery dispute.

Tamil Nadu later filed a contempt petition against the Centre for not working out the scheme, even as the top court,while rapping the Union government for "sheer contempt," asked the Water Resources Ministry Secretary to appear before it on May 14 with the draft Cauvery management scheme.

Later, political commentator and editor of Tamil magazine 'Thuglaq', S Gurumurthy, addressing the audience at the FICCI meeting, backed the NDA government's demonetisation but described the GST rollout as "a very harsh step."