New Delhi, Nov 27 (IANS) Tamil Nadu MPs Monday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and sought his intervention to solve a row with Kerala on the Mullaperiyar dam's height and demanded that central security forces should guard it.
The MPs, including T.R. Balu and G.K. Vasan, met the prime minister in the parliament house. They said Manmohan Singh had assured them that Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz was working out 'an amicable solution'.
'We stand on merit. Kerala has to abide by the Supreme Court verdict (on raising the dam water level). The law will take its own right course,' Vasan told reporters after the meeting.
The Tamil Nadu government has protested Kerala's move to get naval officers to check the safety of the 111-year-old dam, on the Periyar river in Kerala's Idukki district.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K. Karunanidhi had earlier threatened to pull out of Wednesday's scheduled talks with Kerala convened by the central government to resolve the dispute.
Trouble between the two states began ever since the water level in the dam rose to above the prescribed level of 136 feet. The current water level is 138 feet.
The rising waters of the dam, situated on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border, prompted the Idukki district administration to alert villagers living on the banks of the Periyar to move elsewhere.
Kerala and Tamil Nadu are at loggerheads over the dam that was built under an agreement signed in 1886 between the then Maharaja of Travancore and the British administration.
While being located in Kerala, the dam serves Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu has demanded that the storage capacity of the dam be raised from 136 to 142 feet to meet the increasing demand of water for irrigation.
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