TRICHY: Farmers bodies and water management experts in the state have flayed the Centre's decision to constitute a permanent tribunal subsuming existing tribunals to adjudicate on all inter-state disputes over river waters.
Farmers said that a permanent tribunal will not yield the desired results. They said it will meet the same fate as the national water policy on which no consensus has been reached yet despite being present for several years.
"This is not going to help anybody. There cannot be a permanent tribunal as there should be judges not belonging to states involved in disputes," said general secretary of
Tamil Nadu Cauvery Delta Farmers' Welfare Association Mannargudi S Ranganathan.
"Supposing Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka are in a dispute, there should be a judge drawn from a state other than the three. If you have a permanent tribunal and three judges are appointed, one or two of them may have to be transferred or even drawn from other states. So, it won't serve the purpose," he added.
Meanwhile, A Veerappan, former chief engineer of Tamil Nadu, said that the Centre's proposal is a ploy to delay proceedings further.
"The tribunal alone cannot take any decision, because the inter-state problem is a technical matter. It has to be decided by experts, not by juries alone.
" It is the government of India's concerted effort to take away the rights of the state government. They are trying to heap all the power at the Centre. Even after the tribunal gave its final order, the Centre, which is the implementing authority, can take any number of years to arrive at a solution. So, the point is only with the government of India, not with the tribunal," he opined.
"The government of India has already formulated the National Water Framework Bill, 2016, followed by the National Water Policy, 2012, wherein they are going to privatize all river water, not only drinking water, but also for irrigational and industrial purposes. They are going to charge for that in higher order after handing over the right to multinational companies," he alleged.
He said that the formation of the national tribunal will not solve any problem but complicate it further.
"For the past nine years the central government has not come forward to form the Cauvery management board. What moral authority does the the government have to form a inter-state water tribunal?" he said.