Mullaperiyar Issue - Oommen Chandy meets tamil media

The Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had a meeting with a group of Media persons from Tamil Nadu on the boilling Mullaperiyar Dam issue. The closed-door meeting was arranged on saturday. The Tamil media had been invited for the meeting but the media persons from Kerala were not allowed to enter the room. Only a number of officials accompanied the chief minister. Later, after the meeting, Additional Chief Secretary K Jayakumar informed the local media what were talken about in the meeting that lasted about 90 minutes.

Oommen Chandy told the guests that the proposal of a new dam at Mullaperiyar is not a recently developed one. It has an age of as many as 38 years, since a joint committee in 1973 put forward the proposal. The Tamil Nadu media opined that Kerala was creating a fearful situation by reporting that 26 tremors have been recorded by the India Meteorological Department (IMD). They claimed that only 4 tremors have been recorded. But chandy showed them the list of 26 tremors that happened in the Idukki district since July 2011. He said that only tremors over 3 on the Richter Scale got recorded in the IMD report.

The Chief Minister also was quoted to had said that he would be very happy to have a conversation with his Tamil Nadu counterpart J Jayalalitha regarding the issue. He also hoped that this meeting would make the way for such a meeting. The minister said that the state will not show any disrespect towards the Supreme Court verdict in the subject.

The meeting of Oommen Chandy with the Tamil media is expected to make things a little bit smoother. The government believes that making the Tamil people aware of the real present condition of the Mullaperiyar dam has a significant role to play in the issue. It will help to break the ice between the two neighbour states.