BJP state unit to talk to Amit Shah on Mhadei remark

PANAJI: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president and member of parliament Vinay Tendulkar on Tuesday said that the BJP state unit would discuss with BJP national president Amit Shah his reported statement on the Mhadei issue.
Shah is expected in Goa on Sunday and will address party booth workers in Bambolim. A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured Karnataka’s farmers that the BJP would resolve the Mhadei water dispute if it came to power in the state, Shah, on Sunday, set a six-month deadline to resolve the issue.

“We have to see the formula first,” Tendulkar told TOI from Karnataka.

“The party will discuss the Mhadei issue with Shah when he is in Goa.” Tendulkar said that Shah is the party’s national president, and that he would take the decision in the interest of both states. “We have full trust in Shah,” Tendulkar said, adding, “Shah will never compromise the interest of Goa.”

Addressing a public rally in Belagavi, Shah said on Sunday that the farmers of the district will get Mhadei water in their farms in the next six months. He also blamed the Siddaramaiah government for not doing enough to resolve the issue. Shah came out with this deadline after farmers who attended his rally forced him to speak on the issue. Belagavi MP Suresh Angadi translated Shah’s promise to the farmers in Kannada.

Reacting to the Modi and Shah statement, agriculture minister Vijay Sardesai had said that Goa would not compromise on the issue.

In December 2017, chief minister Manohar Parrikar sent a letter to BJP’s Karnataka state unit president B S Yeddyurappa stating that “in principle, Goa would not oppose reasonable and justified quantum” of drinking water to Karnataka from the Mhadei river on “humanitarian grounds”.

Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah dubbed the letter as a “political gimmick” ahead of the assembly elections in the southern state.