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Taking part in the general discussion on the budget, the veteran JD(S) leader said Bengaluru city is already witnessing a shortfall of drinking water and is utilizing water out of the allocation for irrigation that was provided to Karnataka by the Supreme Court.
In her budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that draft DPRs of five river links – namely Damanganga-Pinjal, Par-TapiNarmada, Godavari-Krishna, Krishna-Pennar, and Pennar-Cauvery – have been finalized. Once a consensus is reached among the beneficiary states, the Centre will provide support for implementation, she had said.
”Karnataka is one of the states which is going to suffer very badly, even for drinking water. That is going to be the major issue when the present Budget indicates linking of rivers,” Devegowda said.
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Asserting that the issue is about drinking water, the former prime minister said the Supreme Court has given 4.7 TMC for consumptive usage of drinking water for Bengaluru city. However, he said when the Bengaluru city population was calculated in 2011 it was 85 lakh but ”today the population in Bengaluru is 130 lakh”. ”We are using 50 TMC today out of the allocation for irrigation. You can’t have anything in 4.75 TMC for 130 lakh people,” he asserted.
Devegowda said the Supreme Court had allocated 284 TMC for Karnataka and 400 TMC to Tamil Nadu in the Cauvery water dispute. He alleged that ”consideration to allocate drinking water to one-third of Bangalore city” has not been taken as ”it does not come under the purview of catchment area”.
Accusing the Centre of ”ill-treating” Karnataka, he said, ”We are like orphans.”