Chennai:
Within a few hours of receiving a letter from her Kerala counterpart Oommen Chandy on the Mullaperiyar dam issue, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa responded to it by asking him to guard against unfounded fears and honour the Supreme Court verdict to increase the storage level of the dam to 142 feet.
"While my government and I would always seek to protect the safety and security of every Indian, we should also guard against unfounded fears overtaking reason and ground realities. Informed decision making at the government level should be based on reason rather than on extraneous factors," Jayalalithaa said in her reply to Chandy's letter.
Dismissing Chandy's contention that there have been 22 tremors in the last four months, Jayalalithaa said as per the Indian Meteorological Department data, there have been only four mild tremors in the last four months, that too far away from the vicinity of the Mullaiperiyar dam site, which did not have any effect on the seepage in the dam.
"The seepage of the dam is well within the permissible limits as per the Indian Standards Code.
The possibility of tremors of even medium magnitude does not exist in the dam site. The possibility of the Mullaperiyar dam breaching due to flood waters and collapsing is not logical since all eventualities have been factored in during the strengthening of the dam done between 1980 and 1994 and after all these measures, the retrofitted Mullaperiyar dam is as good as new," Jayalalithaa observed.