New Delhi: The CPI today asked Maharashtra
government to release Chandrababu Naidu from judicial custody
and allow the TDP chief to visit the controversial Babhli
barrage, suggesting the dispute over the project should be
settled through dialogue.
"The Communist Party of India holds that the dispute
regarding the Babhli Project should be settled through a
dialogue rather than confrontation," the party said in a
statement here.
"The party requests Maharashtra government to withdraw
all the prosecutions against Chandrababu Naidu and other
leaders of the TDP and to forthwith release them from
custody," it added.
Naidu and 74 legislators were remanded in two-day
judicial custody that ended today after they refused bail and
insisted on visiting the project site.
The party said the Maharashtra government should have no
objection to allow Chandrababu and his colleagues to visit the
Babhli barrage site, saying "after all it is not a secrete and
prohibited site."
As to the "substantive" issue concerning the flow of
water downstream, they should be resolved through discussions
amongst experts from both Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh in
the mutual interest of people of the two states.
Slamming the Congress-led UPA government over the issue,
the CPI said "the party deplores the attitude of the Central
government which has not taken up the matter between the two
states even though it is pending for more than four years."
The TDP chief and 74 partymen were arrested on July 16
night by Maharashtra Police at Dharmabad during the protest
over an irrigation project in Babhli.
-PTI
