TS Sudhir reports on the latest crisis. Earlier, Jayalalithaa wrote to CM Siddaramaiah requesting him to ensure safety of Tamilians residing in Karnataka.
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The 15-odd students, aged between 10 and 14, were stunned.
The protesters have set vehicles on fire and vandalised public properties.
Is India facing its worst-ever water crisis?
He said the Prime Minister has to convene a meeting of Chief Ministers of riparian states for an out-of-court settlement of the issue. In addition to the above, the flows from the upper catchment are also available to Tamil Nadu. It means Tamil Nadu will receive more water than Karnataka is willing to share.
Farmers also struggle to meet their farming needs.
Observing that violence was not the solution to the Cauvery row, he appealed to people to maintain calm.
Dozens of meetings have been held to find a settlement to the century-old dispute. Karnataka would get only 270bn. The Supreme Court had directed the Karnataka government to release water to Tamil Nadu in the coming days, sparking the protests. So Tamil Nadu went to the top court demanding 50,000 cubic feet of water per second. Kannadigas are averse to sharing water from the Cauvery basin with their neighbouring states. “We will not allow anyone to take law into their hands and we want your cooperation for this”, he said. As the monsoon rains wind down in southern India in September, sources of drinking water run short.
P Ayyakannu, president of the local South Indian Rivers Interlinking Farmers Association, called it “akin to giving pigeon feed to an elephant”. That is the reason why the farmers representing the Cauvery belt in Karnataka have made a decision to file a petition in the Supreme Court to allocate the case to another bench and has strongly advocated the removal of all the lawyers including Mr. Fali Nariman representing Karnataka in this case.
Elaborate security arrangements are in place with 15,000 policemen being deployed, besides Karnataka State Reserve Police, City Armed Reserve Police, Rapid Action Force, Quick Reaction Teams, special forces, Central Industrial Security Force and Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force.
One protester died and two others were injured after police opened fire to disperse the crowd, KSR Charan Reddy, a senior police official, told CNN. Both had Tamil Nadu registration number plates.
A group of activists belonging to a fringe pro-Karnataka group assaulted an engineering student because he had ridiculed Kannada film stars for supporting the strike on Friday, by posting memes on Facebook.
With widespread damage to the vital urban infrastructure, interruption in the transport including, roads, rail and air and inability of the workforce to safely move to and from offices and factories, Karnataka, particularly Bengaluru city, is estimated to have suffered a loss between Rs 22,000-25,000 crore due to Cauvery dispute related violence.
The city that saw widespread violence, appeared to be limping back to normalcy, with no fresh incidents of violence being reported since last night.
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“The government will not press for that (demand to change the Supreme Court Judge)”.
