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Trains to be suspended on TN bandh day

The Southern Railway has suspended all train services in, to and from Tamil Nadu during the dawn-to-dusk, all-party bandh (general strike) called on Wednesday by the Jayalalithaa government.

The strike is to draw the attention of the Centre and the nation towards Karnataka's refusal to comply with the orders of the Supreme Court and the Cauvery River Authority.

Educational institutions, public transport, cinema halls and government offices will also remain closed.

But emergency services like electricity, hospitals, water and milk supplies will not be affected, thought petrol bunks will remain closed.

Meanwhile, the slanging match between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka on the Cauvery row continues. Issuing a statement in Chennai, Tamil Nadu Public Works Minister O Panneerselvam denied Karnataka Irrigation Minister H K Patil's charge that Tamil Nadu had committed a fraud and violated the 1924 agreement between the two states by unilaterally expanding the land under Cauvery irrigation.

Patil had made that statement in reaction to Chief Minister Jayalalithaa calling Karnataka a 'roguish' state.

Panneerselvam said Tamil Nadu had always informed Karnataka, the Centre, and the Planning Commission at every turn and even obtained the permission of the latter two.

Instead, he said, it was Karnataka that had built the Hemavati, Herangi, and Kabini reservoirs without the prior consent of Tamil Nadu, as provided for in the 1892 and 1924 agreements, and was operating them on an ad hoc basis even now without the Centre's approval.

Questioning Karnataka's locus standi to speak about the 'comity of states' in Tamil Nadu's context after disobeying the orders of the Supreme Court and the CRA, Panneerselvam said, "Perhaps in Patil's dictionary the personal references made to Jayalalithaa by Karnataka Chief Minister S M Krishna, in his 'diatribe' to the press, was dignified language becoming of a chief minister."

Panneerselvam described Karnataka's inclusion of additional land without mandatory clearances and flouting of the Supreme Court and the CRA's orders as "unprincipled and dishonest" and said this justified Jayalalithaa's use of the phrase "roguish conduct" as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary.

In an interesting development, the ruling Congress in the Union Territory of Pondicherry has called for an all-party bandh on Wednesday to coincide with the one in Tamil Nadu.

Justifying the call, Chief Minister N Rengaswamy said the decision was taken at an all-party meeting on Monday. Business establishments and educational institutions will remain closed during the 12-hour bandh beginning at 0600 IST, but essential services will be exempted.

Pondicherry Congress president V Narayanaswamy, who has given the formal call for the bandh, said leaders of all political parties had been consulted on the matter. He said farmers in Karaikal were already in trouble after having lost the short-term kuruvai crop, and may not be able to raise the mainstay samba crop.

Narayanaswamy said a bandh on the same day in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry would minimize the hardship for the people, and denied any political motive.

The Pondicherry bandh, however, is targeted at Tamil Nadu as well as Karnataka, to demand its due share of the Cauvery waters for the Karaikal enclave at the tail-end of the Thanjavur delta.

The move is meant to embarrass the Jayalalithaa government, even as Tamil Nadu seeks to embarrass Karnataka, by making Tamil Nadu commit that it has no water to spare for Karaikal, just as Karnataka claims it has none for the Thanjavur delta.

Cauvery Water Dispute: The Complete Coverage

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