Tamil community in Seychelles protest over water project in Tamil Nadu |17 April 2018

 The Tamil Community in Seychelles staged a protest at the Indian high commission yesterday against the actions of the Indian government to set up a water project following a ruling by the Supreme Court of India.

The local Tamils feel that the setting up of the Cauvery Water Management  Board affects its ancient agricultural fertile lands and natural ground water.

The Cauvery is a perennial river that originates in Karnataka and flows through Tamil Nadu into Puducherry where it merges with the Bay of Bengal.

Representatives of the local Tamil Community, Pandian Pillay and M. Velayutam Pillay, stated that such a protest was to give support to all the Tamils who are fighting to protect their rights to keep the Cauvery Delta region as an agricultural zone instead of a petroleum zone.

“We oppose any project that affects our ancient agricultural fertile lands and our ground water; it will be like sterile, methane, hydro-carbon and any other anti-human projects.  Tamil Nadu should be kept as a land of nature for our future generations,” they said.

The Cauvery is the only perennial river in Tamil Nadu and is currently the source of over 70 percent of canal irrigation that supplies water to the state’s agricultural lands. A number of districts in central and western Tamil Nadu, as well as parts of Madurai and Ramanathapuram depend on the Cauvery for drinking water as well.

Also present at the protest were other organisers of the demonstration and this included G. Saravanan Govindarajan, Mateshkumar Balasubramaniyan, Chandrasekaran Padmanaban and Venkatesh Ramalinggam.