Bengaluru: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said on Thursday that the state could not release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu in the present circumstances.

Speaking at the meeting convened by Union Minister for Water Resources Uma Bharti in New Delhi, Siddaramaiah had appealed the Union Government to send a team of experts to the Cauvery basin in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to verify the ground realities, storage of water, inflows and outflows for taking an informed decision. “Never in the past decade was the yield in the Cauvery Basin so bad. The deviation from the normal rainfall has been quite high and the whole south-west monsoon did not give us the minimum required rainfall and inflows that could have saved the crops of the farmers. The south-west monsoon was expected to yield 257 TMC inflows into the four major reservoirs of Karnataka in a normal year up to the end of September based on 41 years average (1974-75 to 2014-15) against which the 4 reservoirs as on September 28, 2016 have received only 129.85 TMC (50.5% of the average flow). This clearly shows that in all probability this year is a going to be severe distress year,’’ Siddaramaiah said.

Stating that water level at four reservoirs were depleted considerably due to the failure of south-west monsoon, the chief minister said the inflows into four major reservoirs (Harangi, Hemavathy, Krishnarajasagara and Kabini reservoirs) up to end of August was 114.66 TMC against the average inflow of 219.38 tmc, resulting in an enormous deficit of 104.72 TMC, which is about 47.7%. “The live storage in all the four major reservoirs was 48.0 TMC against the designed live storage of 104.55 TMC, which is about 46% only which would indicate precarious situation about water availability in the Karnataka storages,’’ the chief minister said.

He said that since the water year 2015-16 was admittedly a ‘bad year’ and 2016-17 up to now has all the prospect of a ‘bad year’ if not a worst year, it is respectfully submitted that in compliance to the directive contained in para 29 of Chapter-7 read with Clause-XVII of the Final Order it is requested to alter as a first step the monthly/ten days schedule of releases “while making efforts to meet the seasonal allocations for the crops as far as possible with consultation with the party-States”. In the second step, after alteration of the monthly/ten daily releases, the liability of Karnataka at the interstate border Biligundlu should be tentatively decided having regard to the deficient yield in Karnataka catchment of Cauvery basin. In the third step, if it is found that what Karnataka has already released is lesser than what is due to Tamil Nadu on tentative assessment, the shortfall should be considered for releases at the end of the season having regard to performance of North-East rainfall and the ground water in the delta region. “The ground reality at present stare at the face that no further releases from Karnataka can be directed without destroying the standing crops of farmers and causing shortages in the drinking water supplies in Karnataka,’’ he said.