SC to hear Cauvery water issue on Sept 10

The Supreme Court today said it will hear on September 10 the plea of Tamil Nadu seeking a direction to Karnataka for releasing 2TMC of water from Cauvery river as an interim measure.

The plea by the Tamil Nadu Government was made after the Centre told a bench comprising justices D K Jain and Madan Lokur that a meeting of Cauvery River Authority (CRA) headed by the Prime Minister will be held on September 19.

The Bench on September 3 had pulled up the PMO officials for not holding a meeting of
CRA to resolve the water-sharing dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

While seeking interim arrangement, Tamil Nadu Government said that one crop has already been destroyed due to deficit rain and second crop will also face the crisis due to shortage of irrigational water.

However, Karnataka Government opposed the plea saying that the figure provided for the release of water was not correct as in 2002 Tamil Nadu was getting 46TMC but now it is claiming that the water has been reduced to 22TMC.

The bench said it will consider the issue on Monday after getting proper information about the reduction of water.

The matter was listed for hearing four days after the bench had expressed surprise that the meeting of CRA, comprising chief ministers of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala, had not taken place as the PMO was trying to fix a date convenient to all members.

The court had asked the Centre to inform it about the meeting of CRA.
The Centre on August 30 had told the apex court that it would soon convene a CRA meeting, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to consider Tamil Nadu's plea for release of 25.373 tmfct (thousand million cubic feet) of water from Cauvery river to save the state's standing crops.

In its affidavit, the Centre had said it had written to Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry on the proposed meeting for their consent as the meeting was subject to the availability of the quorum.

In its application, Tamil Nadu had said during the current irrigation year 2012-2013, though the south west monsoon is not vigorous in the Cauvery catchment of Karnataka, the state of Karnataka had received 21.9 TMCft of inflow in its four major reservoirs up to July 20.

"But it has not shared the water with Tamil Nadu. Instead it started to build the storages in its 4 major reservoirs and letting water in the canals of Krishna Raja Sagar for irrigation with the result that the state of Tamil Nadu has been deprived of its due share of water as per the interim order of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal," the application said.

It had complained that over the years, Karnataka did not agree to the distress sharing formula evolved by the Central Water Commission/Cauvery Monitoring Committee, with the result that it "resorts to impounding all the flows in its reservoirs depriving the state of Tamil Nadu in getting its legitimate flows, more so during the lean years, thus aggravating the distress situation."

Tamil Nadu had said "during the current irrigation season 2012-13 also, the southwest monsoon has not been active so far in the catchment area of Cauvery, with the result that there is a distress situation and since there is no agreed formula for sharing the flows in such distress years, the state is put to hardship."