DMK's stand on new panel for MullaiPeriyar issue...

The legal tangle between Tamil Nadu and Kerala over the Mullaperiyar Dam dispute took a new twist on Saturday with ruling DMK saying there was no need for the State to nominate its representative to the committee constituted by the Supreme Court to go into the dam’s safety aspects.

DMK’s General Council, which met here, in a resolution said it was not in a position to accept the Supreme Court’s ruling constituting the five-member committee to examine the safety aspects of the over century-old reservoir.

“It has already been proved in Supreme Court by a seven-member committee set up by Centre that the dam is strong. This General Council strongly believes there is no need for State Government’s representative in the (new) committee,” it said.

The apex court had on February 18 appointed former Chief Justice of India A.S. Anand as the head of the committee and directed the Centre to choose the remaining four members while authorising the two States to nominate one member each.

The Supreme Court order came during the hearing of a petition by Tamil Nadu against Kerala’s proposal to build a new dam in place of the existing reservoir.

The two neighbouring states are locked in a bitter tussle over the dam located in Idduki district of Kerala but controlled by Tamil Nadu, where it caters to irrigation and drinking water needs of southern districts.

The DMK resolution pointed out that Kerala had not honoured the February 2006 Supreme Court judgement allowing Tamil Nadu to raise the water level from 136 ft to 142 feet and even brought an amendment to an existing act (Kerala Irrigation and Water Conservation (Amendment) Act 2006, apparently aimed at circumventing the apex court order.

Kerala has been opposing Tamil Nadu’s plea for increasing the water level in the dam on the ground that the reservoir was not safe and any potential disaster would lead to inundation of downstream districts.

In another resolution, the DMK General Council opposed the Centre’s proposed National Commission for Higher Education and Research, saying the State was not in a position to implement it. “It was against the social justice and the concept of unity in diversity,” it said.

The State’s stand had already been conveyed to a central team, set up to elicit the views of the state governments on the HRD Ministry proposal to set up the overarching body in place of the existing three bodies in higher education, during its visit here earlier this week.