About two lakh people in Palakkad’s Chittur taluk are facing acute drinking water shortage even as a high-level central team visited the drought-affected areas there on Tuesday. Officials of the Kerala Water Resources Department said the shortage would be severe if Tamil Nadu did not release water from Parambikulam. Drought has already destroyed paddy cultivation to the tune of Rs 80 crore in the district. Chittur is the worst affected. Tamil Nadu was to release 6.11 TMC of water every “water year,” between July 1 and June 30, according to the Parambikulam-Aliyar Project (PAP) agreement. Tamil Nadu, however, cited deficient rainfall, and released only 4.96 TMC of water. It also turned down Kerala’s demand for 850 million cubic feet of water for March. Kerala has now demanded immediate release of water to sustain the flow in the coming two months. It has been maintaining that about 1TMC of water is available at upper Aliyar and Kadamparai, and it could be used for supplying drinking water in Chittur. Chief minister Oommen Chandy had a month ago written to his Tamil Nadu counterpart J Jayalalithaa, requesting for the release of water from Parambikulam. Tamil Nadu has not responded to the request. Meanwhile, the high-level team visited Eruthiampathy and Vadakarapathy panchayats, and interacted with local residents, who apprised the officials of the water scarcity and crop loss due to rising temperature. The team also visited the reservoirs in Meenkara, Chulliyar and Kunnamkattupathy. They will visit Thrissur on Wednesday. Central team in Kottayam Kottayam:The high-level central team inspected the dried up paddy fields and coconut groves in Vechoor and Kumarakom in Kottayam. The team held discussions with the elected members and officials. The members apprised the team about the situation in the western region of the district where saline water entered the fields causing extensive damage to crops. TNN