THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Saturday indicated that his efforts were on to get Tamil Nadu to agree to a new dam at Mullaperiyar. “We should agree to the idea of a new dam,” he told a team of visiting journalists from Tamil Nadu. The details could be worked out later. “We can make reasonable adjustments,” he reasoned.Premising his pitch on the motto “Water for Tamil Nadu, Safety for Kerala”, Chandy said he was prepared to make the commitment bilaterally with Tamil Nadu, in a tripartite manner that brought in the Central government, through an assurance to the Supreme Court; he was even ready to pass an enactment in the Kerala Assembly.Careful to say that he was not accusing anybody, the Kerala chief minister said he was not very encouraged by the response he got to two letters he wrote to his Tamil Nadu counterpart J Jayalalithaa. He did not wish to amplify. “We want to have talks with Tamil Nadu,” he said. However, when asked if he had sought talks, he replied in the negative.In response to a question why the issue had been projected in the manner it has been, Chandy said his intention was “to safeguard the feelings of the people residing downstream”. He put the numbers of people he felt were clearly at risk at “more than 50 lakh”.Chandy’s fears were primarily driven by a spike in tremors in Idukki district. Since July, over 27 continuous tremors have been recorded - the highest at 3.8 on the Richter scale. He said prior to this sudden increase in seismic activity there were no such continuous tremors. “The dam is safe. But continuous earthquakes are happening there. If it crosses 6 on the Richter scale it may affect the dam,” he said.The Additional Chief Secretary of Kerala, K Jayakumar, who assisted the chief minister during the interaction, spoke of the “graph of the fear perception” growing. The chief minister said he had visited the areas afflicted by this fear and found that the children were not going to school and needed counselling. Asked specifically if the Kerala government had sought a second opinion on the IIT Roorkee hydrological assessment, Jayakumar admitted this had not been done. Asked specifically why the Kerala government had premised its efforts on the worst-case scenario projections freely disseminated in the State and whether it had made an effort to allay the fears, Jayakumar said that had not been done. He pleaded helplessness, saying that this was the mood of the people.A “dam break analysis” would be out in about three months; a preliminary part would be available in less than that.Both Chandy and Jayakumar said detailed project reports had been prepared for the construction of a new dam downstream at an estimated cost of a little over Rs 660 crore. The optimistic assessment was that it could be built in four to five years, but Kerala did not want to take this unilateral step, as it would antagonise Tamil Nadu. The chief minister kept stressing that his priority was to maintain cordial relations with Tamil Nadu.The intention was to get Tamil Nadu to agree to the idea of a new dam. It should not be that the Mullaperiyar dam be strengthened indefinitely, said Jayakumar. For five or six years, it would be understandable, but not indefinitely, he said.
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