Bengaluru: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah convened a meeting on Thursday with retired judges, former Advocate Generals and legal experts in the city to seek their suggestions to present a strong argument at the Cauvery Supervisory Committee meeting and before the Supreme Court.

Retired Chief Justice of India S Rajendra Babu, retired High Court Chief Justice Rama Jois, retired High Court judges A J Sadashiva, P Vishwanath Shetty, N Kumar, State Advocate General Madhusudan Naik, formeg AGs B V Acharya, Ravi Varma Kumar, member of the state legal team in Cauvery dispute, Mohan Katarki, and others participated in the meeting.

Suggestions poured in from almost every member present in the meeting. Presenting comprehensive data on the distress in the Cauvery basin in Karnataka, seeking a visit by an expert committee to both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to assess the ground realities and highlighting the comfortable level of storage in Mettur dam to meet immediate water needs of Tamil Nadu, were a few of them.

The retired judges want the state’s legal team to focus on convincing the Cauvery Supervisory Committee on September 19 to send an expert team to assess the ground realities in both the states, ahead of the hearing of the issue in Supreme Court on September 20.

Facts like the State is the second largest tracts of dry land in the country, rainfall pattern, huge difference in ground water levels in the Cauvery basin of the two states were suggested by the legal experts to be put before the Cauvery Supervisory Committee and SC while arguing the case.