Bengaluru :Joining issue with Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu over Mahadayi river water dispute, Karnataka Water resources Minister M B Patil today said instead of blaming the Congress high command, BJP ministers at the Centre should take action to solve the issue.
“Instead of blaming the Congress High Command, Venkaiah Naidu and his ministers should focus on solving the vexed Mahadayi water dispute … Dragging our leader’s name is irrelevant at this point of time,” Patil told PTI here.
Naidu had yesterday hit out at Chief Minister Siddaramaiah for blaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he was suffering from ‘selective memory loss’. He said Sonia Gandhi had commented on May 30, 2007, that her party was committed not to allow river water diversion.
Patil said the party was not aware of the Congress high command’s statements on the issue. But he believed she spoke about the issue during an election campaign in Goa.
Siddaramaiah, after leading an all-party delegation to hold talks with Prime Minister in New Delhi on Aug 24, had said Modi refused to invite chief ministers of Goa, Maharashtra and Karnataka for an out-of-court settlement of the row.
Asked to comment about BJP’s demand that Siddaramaiah should take the initiative of convening an all-party meeting of all the three states, Patil told reporters that it would not hold good and instead the Prime Minister should intervene.
“There is a difference between the all-party meeting convened by the Prime Minister and the chief ministers of three states. The Prime Minister is the head of the federal setup and his intervention carries more weight than the meeting convened by chief ministers of the three states,” he said.
The chances of arriving at a solution in a meeting convened by the Prime Minister were more, he added.
PTI