Violence over Cauvery waters will cost Sonia, Rahul dearly

The Congress leadership should have immediately called on the Karnataka chief minister to implement the Supreme Court order and crack down on the violence, says R Rajagopalan.

The Supreme Court’s order to the Karnataka government to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu has legal and constitutional obligations on 
the Congress government headed by Siddaramaiah.

Till yesterday the issue remained legal but it turned political when the Karnataka government made it an all-party issue by convening a meeting of all political leaders to discuss the Supreme Court order.

The Cauvery water dispute is a perennial political, legal, emotional and sensitive issue. Whichever government is in Karnataka, be it of the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party or the Janata Dal-Secular, the dispute can not be solved because of the political leaders’ inability to arrive at a settlement. 

It is the same on the Tamil Nadu side as well. If Jayalalitha is in power, Karunanidhi would whip up emotions by raising the issue of standing crops which need water, or vice versa. Interestingly, there is a 
specific period when the standing crops need water, which is in the middle of September; however, the issue hots up from 
July onwards. 

The blame for the latest round of violence rests squarely on the non-implementation of the Supreme Court order by Karnataka. And the responsibility for letting the issue degenerate into violence should rest entirely on the Siddaramaiah government. Like former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao who kept mum when Babri Majid was being demolished in 1992, Siddharamiah too slept through the outbreak of violence and remained a mute spectator.

The Congress party, especially its central leadership, should take a fair share of the responsibility for the state government’s inaction. Why did vice president Rahul Gandhi, ever ready to fly out to violence-affected spots, not visit Bengaluru to see first-hand how hooliganism was unleashed on innocent Tamils living in and around of Bengaluru city?

But the Congress government seems to have adopted a stoic silence. 

In 1986, the Tamil Nadu government had appealed to the central government to constitute a tribunal for solving the issue under the Inter-State Water Disputes Act, 1956. However, the tribunal was set up only after the Supreme Court took cognisance of the issue and ordered the Central government to do so in 1990. 

The Cauvery Waters Tribunal was thus constituted on June, 2, 1990.
After 16 years of holding hearings and passing an interim order, the tribunal announced its final order in 2007 allocating 419 tmc ft water to Tamil Nadu and 270 tmc ft to Karnataka. Kerala was given 30 tmc ft
and Puducherry got 7 tmc ft. The tribunal had come to the conclusion that the total availability of water in the Cauvery basin stood at 740 tmc ft. However, both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka filed a review petition
before the tribunal.

In 2012, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as chairman of the Cauvery River Authority, directed the Karnataka government to release 9,000 cusecs of water daily. When it failed to do so, the Supreme Court slammed the state government which offered an unconditional apology and started the release of water, leading to widespread violent protests.

For the past fortnight, when the Cauvery dispute was hotting up, regional media in both states and TV news channels went live with their coverage of violence, buses being burnt, etc.

Like how his predecessor P Chidambaram imposed a ban on live coverage of violence during the Telangana agitation, it would have helped had Home Minister Rajnath Singh done the same. That may have helped contain the situation.

The Congress leadership should ponder over the party’s poor image in Tamil Nadu -- primarily due to the heavy-handed violence perpetuated by fringe groups and Siddaramaiah’s silence over the anti-Tamil violence in his state. Such miscalculation by the leadership, especially on the part of Rahul Gandhi, will cost the Congress organisation very dear in Tamil Nadu. 

Politically, the worst affected in the Bengaluru violence is the image of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi as decisive leaders and the All India Congress Committee organisation. The Cauvery dispute could have been solved if only the AICC had called on Siddaramaiah not only to release the water as per the court’s dictates but also to contain the violence.

Image: A vehicle from Tamil Nadu is torched by pro-Kannada activists during a protest over the Cauvery water row in Bengaluru. Photograph: PTI Photo.