Karnataka legislature to decide on water release on Monday

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government on Saturday called a special joint legislative session on Monday to discuss and decide on the Supreme Court’s order to release Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu from October 1-6.
“We will take a call on releasing water after the joint session of the legislature on Monday. We are also filing a review petition on Monday seeking modification of the Supreme Court’s Friday order to release 6,000 cusecs per day for six days,” said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah after a cabinet meeting here.
He also briefed his ministers on the views of other political parties expressed earlier at the all-party meeting, opposing release of water at any cost as per the September 23 unanimous resolution of the state legislature.
“As we are not in a position to release further water, the cabinet has decided to appeal to the apex court for modifying its September 30 order,” said Siddaramaiah.
On the apex court’s directive to the Union government for setting up the Cauvery Management Board, he said as the state’s special review petition against constituting it was pending before the Supreme Court, the state government had requested the Union Water Resources Minister to rush an expert committee to assess the ground realities in both the states. (IANS)