Daijiworld Media Network – Bangalore (SP)

Bangalore, Sep 19: Addressing a meeting of people's representatives hailing from coastal Karnataka, Karnataka chief minister, Siddaramaiah, tried to clear the misgivings they apparently had relating to Yettinahole project.

In the consultative meeting attended among others by former union minister Oscar Fernandes, ministers Ramanath Rai, Vinay Kumar Sorake, U T Khadar, M B Patil, and T B Jayachandra, legislators Mohiuddin Bawa, Vasant Bangera, J R Lobo, Ivan D'Souza, Ganesh Karnik and Pratapchandra Shetty as well as principal secretary in water resources department Kapil Mohan, and chief minister's secretary Srinivas, the CM presented an exhaustive picture of the project to make it clear that the project envisages use of excess rain water for augmentation of tanks in Kolar and Chikkaballapur districts.

"Yettinahole project is not a river diversion project. As such, there is no need for the people, environmentalists and activists to get unduly perturbed by it. Netravati river diversion project is quite a different concept than Yettinahole project, which only proposes to use about 24 tmc of rain water between June and October to fill tanks in the above two districts. The purpose of the project is to rejuvenate these tanks towards meeting requirement of these drinking water-starved districts," he explained.

He called upon the people's representatives to convince the environment and anti-project activists about the genuine aim of the project. "They need to be educated about the fact that this is not a river diversion project. If there is a need, let them be invited to the city to get a complete and comprehensive picture of the entire project with every individual detail," he instructed officials of water resources department.

The officials presented details of the project along with a map showing how water is pooled, diverted and collected, duly providing details of how much rain water goes waste by just flowing into the sea during rainy season.