At a ``meet-the-press'' programme of the Bangalore Reporters' Guild here, Nage Gowda stated that the Authority would only be a political executive body to ensure the implementation of the Cauvery water dispute tribunal's interim award taking the availability of water into account. Karnataka has agreed to implement the award subject to the normal rainfall and it can always plead its inability to release water whenever the monsoon failed.

Criticising the Congress for politicising the issue especially after giving consent in writing authorising Karnataka Chief Minister J H Patel to decide on the creation of the Authority, Gowda ridiculed its``attempts'' to blackmail the people in the Cauvery river basin.

Gowda said it was during the Congress rule at the Centre, the tribunal interim award was gazetted and the clarificatory orders were also issued later and thereby imposed the award on Karnataka.

``You cannot blackmail the people anymore, they are more enlightened today and have understood that the creation of the Authority would not affect their interests.''

Meanwhile, Gowda maintained that Karnataka had made it clear to the other three chief ministers of the upper riparian states at the meeting convened by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee that the consent to the creation of the Authority was subject to the condition that there should be no opposition to increasing the irrigation potential in the Cauvery basin.

He allayed fears that Karnataka would be compelled to release 205 TMC feet of water as per the award and said that the prime minister would solve the issue without being biased to any state.

Accusing the ruling Janata Dal ofbeing sold out to the BJP, Congress member D B Chandre Gowda sought to know from Nage Gowda how the farmers in the Cauvery basin would be benefitted from the Authority. ``Hitherto the people of the State were afraid of the Tribunal, but hereafter there would be fear from the Authority also.''

Recalling the loss of 26 human lives and Rs 160 crore worth property in the State following the Tribunal's interim award, Chandre Gowda pointed out that besides political parties, State legislature and irrigation experts had opposed the interim award and held that the State would never get justice from the tribunal.