Kerala, TN trade blows on opening of dam floodgates
NEW DELHI/CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government hit back at Kerala on Friday over who was to blame for the devastating floods that left around 220 people dead and caused losses worth thousands of crores of rupees earlier this month, reopening a decades-old fight in the Supreme Court and outside.
Lawyers for Kerala had a day earlier told the top court in an affidavit that Tamil Nadu’s failure to control release of water from the Mullaperiyar dam till the reservoir reached its full capacity was one of the reasons for the flash floods. On Friday, Tamil Nadu’s counsel responded by calling the claim “clever” in the top court, while its chief minister E Palaniswami said the allegations in the affidavit was “deliberately false”.
The Mullaperiyar dam falls in Kerala but is controlled by Tamil Nadu, which uses the reservoir’s water for irrigation and power generation. The two states have fought over how much water can be stored in it, with Kerala claiming the dam was weak and posed a threat to its cities downstream.
“In this affidavit (by Kerala), I see a clever device to get out of the judgment of this court,” senior advocate Shekhar Naphade said in the Supreme Court, referring to a 2014 ruling that allowed Tamil Nadu to raise the water level to 142 feet. Chief Justice Dipak Misra, who was on the bench along with justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud, made it clear that the court would only go into the disaster management aspect . The bench said water level in the Mullaperiyar dam must be maintained three feet below the permissible limit till August 31, as suggested by a sub-committee formed by the Union government. “We are only concerned with the safety and lives of people,” the chief justice said and posted the matter for hearing on September 6.
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