National Politics

โ€œCongress Responsible For Mahadayi Controversy,โ€ Says CM Bommai

CM Bommai

Bengaluru: Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Tuesday blamed the Congress for not protecting the interests of Karnataka in the Mahadayi dispute with Goa.
โ€œIt was the Congress party who was responsible for the controversial Mahadayi project. The party supremo Sonia Gandhi during the election campaign in Goa declared that not even a drop of water will be diverted anywhereโ€ he added. On being asked about the recent tweet by the former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah that the Congress would provide internal reservation (reservation for communities among Scheduled Castes) when it came to power, Bommai said, โ€œthe Congress had done nothing more than organise a conference and make an assurance in this regard before the previous polls.โ€

Also Read: Watch: โ€œIn 2005-07 Rajiv Gandhi Foundation Received Grant Of Rs 1.35 Crores From Chinese Embassyโ€: Amit Shah

Bommai said Congress had ignored the demand for increasing the quota for SCs and STs, which had been pending for the last 40 years. He added that Congress could not deceive people by assuring them of internal reservation.
Karnataka and Goa are fighting a two-year-long dispute over the sharing of the Mahadayi river water in the Supreme Court after both parties expressed reservations about the award by the Mahadayi dispute tribunal in 2018.
Claiming it would cause โ€œecological devastationโ€ in Goa, the state has also opposed the diversion of water from the Mahadayi river basin through the Kalasa-Kanduri project.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by HW News staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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Reports of Centreโ€™s delimitation plans for J&K draw strong reactions from mainstream parties

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Srinagar | Mainstream parties in Kashmir on Tuesday reacted sharply to reports that the Centre was planning delimitation in the state, saying it was an obvious attempt to โ€œinflict another emotional partitionโ€ on the state โ€œon communal linesโ€.

Earlier on Tuesday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah was given a detailed presentation on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, where the BJP has been pushing for carrying out a delimitation exercise for getting more seats for Jammu region in the state assembly.

โ€œDistressed to hear about GoIโ€™s (Government of India) plan to redraw assembly constituencies in J&K. Forced delimitation is an obvious attempt to inflict another emotional partition of the state on communal lines. Instead of allowing old wounds to heal, GoI is inflicting pain on Kashmiris,โ€ former chief minister and Peoples Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti said on Twitter.

Officials said there was no discussion on constituting a delimitation commission during the meeting with Shah.

However, they said, against the backdrop of delimitation demands by the state BJP, there was a possibility of the new central government constituting a delimitation commission to redraw the scope and size of the assembly segments and determine the number of seats to be reserved for Scheduled Castes.

National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah said his party would oppose tooth and nail any attempt to make changes without a mandate from the people of the state.

โ€œThe freeze on delimitation was applied to J&K and was done to bring the state in line with the rest of the country. The same was challenged & upheld in both the High Court of J&K & the Supreme Court,โ€ Omar tweeted.

โ€œA freeze on delimitation has been applied to the entire country until 2026 and contrary to the way some ill-informed TV channels are trying to sell it, it isnโ€™t just a J&K specific freeze,โ€ he said.

The NC leader said it was rather surprising that the BJP, which talks about bringing Jammu and Kashmir at par with other states by removing Articles 370 and 35-A of the Constitution, โ€œnow wants to treat J-K differently from other states in this one respectโ€.

โ€œWhen delimitation takes place in the rest of the country the BJP is welcome to apply it to J&K, until then, we in the @JKNC_ will oppose, tooth & nail, any attempt to make changes without a mandate from the people of the state,โ€ he said.

Peoples Conference chairman Sajad Lone said he hoped that the reports are untrue. โ€œHope and pray that media reports about Kashmir arenโ€™t true. Donโ€™t understand the earth shattering hurry. And this perception of being wronged at a provincial level. If thousands of graves in Kashmir donโ€™t add up to people being wronged, wonder what wronged means,โ€ Lone said in a tweet.

Former IAS officer and Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Movement president Shah Faesal said it is a โ€œvery seriousโ€ and โ€œdisturbingโ€ development.

โ€œIf this is true, then I think this is a very, very serious and disturbing development. We have to understand that the state legislature has put a freeze on the delimitation exercise till 2026-2031. So, any delimitation exercise, if it is to be done in the state, has to be done with the concurrence of the state legislature,โ€ he said in a video he posted on his Twitter handle.

โ€œIf the idea is to meet the growing demands of the population, if the idea is to give a certain kind of balance to three regions, we believe that the state legislature and the people of the state are the best stakeholders to take that decision,โ€ he said.

Faesal warned that any delimitation exercise in violation of the freeze imposed by the state legislature would be seen as โ€œmanipulative and will have dangerous consequencesโ€ for the state.

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