Tamil Nadu-Kerala Mullaperiyar Dam dispute: K Palaniswami says opening of barricade did not cause floods

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Friday said the Kerala government was giving ‘wrong information’ about Mullaperiyar dam so that the water storage level does not go up to 152 feet. Speaking to reporters at Mukkombu near Tiruchirappalli, about 350 kilometres from the state capital, Palaniswami refuted the Kerala government’s allegation that opening of the Mullaperiyar Dam resulted in floods in that state. [caption id=“attachment_5037441” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Mullaperiyar dam in Kerala. Wikimedia commons.[/caption] Though located in Kerala, the Mullaperiyar Dam is owned and operated by Tamil Nadu. As per the Supreme Court orders, the water storage level in the dam is 142 feet. Palaniswami said that water released from Mullaperiyar Dam had gone to only one place. The Kerala government on Thursday told the Supreme Court that the sudden release of water from the Mullaperiyar dam by the Tamil Nadu government was one of the reasons for the massive floods in the state. On 16 August, 2018, Palaniswami in a letter to his Kerala counterpart Pinarayi Vijayan alleged that his state officials were not being permitted to gauge the rainfall in the catchment area of Mullaperiyar dam in Kerala and urged the neighbouring state to share rainfall data on a real-time basis. “I would like to point out that Kerala is not permitting our officials to gauge the rainfall in the dam’s catchment area, compelling them to assess the inflow only on the basis of actual rise in dam water level,” said Palaniswami. He said the Tamil Nadu Water Resources Department is managing and regulating water released from the Mullaperiyar dam as per the inflow rate.