Mullaperiyar Dam: What Is the Controversy Forcing Tamil Nadu To Be At Loggerheads With Kerala?

By 1990s, Tamil Nadu started to demand the authorities to restore the full capacity and the issue has been going on since then.

Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan and Mullaperiyar Dam (Credit: ABP Nadu)

Chennai: Heavy rains wreaked havoc in Kerala and claimed the lives of over 40 people last month. When the situation started going out of control, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan immediately requested his Tamil Nadu counterpart MK Stalin to draw water from Mullaperiyar dam and told Tamil Nadu to inform them 24 hours prior to opening the shutters to avoid loss of life. The Tamil Nadu government obliged and later drew water. However, still, the controversy over the Mullaperiyar dam has taken the centre stage.

ABP Live has come up with an explainer to break down the complex dispute continuing for over a century. 

How did the Mullaperiyar issue begin?

The Maharaj of Travancore on October 29, 1886, signed a 999-year Periyar Lake lease agreement with the then British government which permitted the construction of a dam across the Periyar river in the Idukki district. After the agreement, the dam was constructed within the next nine years and the water from the dam has been helping in irrigation of several districts of Tamil Nadu including Dindigul, Sivaganga and Ramanathapuram. 

However, when the dam was nearing a century, in 1979, there were confusions over the strength of the structure as the dam was built with lime-surkhi. Following this, a Central Water Commission chairman KC Thomas met and decided to bring down the full capacity of the dam from 152 feet to 136 feet. However, by the 1990s, Tamil Nadu started to demand the authorities to restore the full capacity and the issue has been going on since then.

The recent controversy

On October 28, the Kerala government made a submission before Supreme Court stating that the dam is extremely vulnerable and hence should be decommissioned for building a new dam. The note of the government further said that the "dam could be catastrophic and beyond human imagination." It also mentioned that more than 30 lakh people of 5 districts are residing downstream of the dam.

However, on Sunday,  Tamil Nadu Minister Duraimurugan continued to remain in the same stand. The Minister said, the state will strengthen the baby dam and once it's done then the water level can be increased to 152 feet. 

Further, Tamil Nadu also lashed out at AIADMK for calling for a protest and said the former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami nor O Panneerselvam visited the dam in the past 10 years.