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Mahadayi: 'Karnataka has not violated tribunal award'

Last Updated 09 September 2019, 18:42 IST

Rejecting claims made by the Goa government, which has repeatedly accused Karnataka of trying to divert additional water from the Mahadayi (Mhadei in Goa) basin despite a Tribunal order, Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs and Dharwad MP Pralhad Joshi on Monday urged the two states to negotiate a settlement.

"Tribunal has given its order and I think both the governments are unhappy and they have challenged the award in Supreme Court. I have requested Karnataka chief minister, and today I request Chief Minister of Goa to negotiate a settlement," Joshi told reporters in Panaji.

Mahadayi is a lifeline in the northern parts of the coastal state. It originates in Karnataka and meets the Arabian Sea in Panaji, while briefly flowing through the territory of Maharashtra.

Last year, the Mahadayi interstate water dispute tribunal, which was hearing a dispute between Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra for nearly two decades, over sharing of river water, in its award had allocated 13.42 tmcft (including 3.9 tmcft for diversion into the depleted Malaprabha river basin) from the Mahadayi river basin to Karnataka. Maharashtra was awarded 1.33 tmcft.

The Goa government had filed a disqualification petition in the Supreme Court subsequently, after the Goa Water Resources department claimed, that canals had been surreptitiously built in the Mahadayi basin in Karnataka to divert the river water to the Malaprabha river basin.

Joshi, however, ruled out any such illegal construction of other canals and infrastructure by the Karnataka government.

"No work is going on to my knowledge," Joshi said, adding that after the award of the tribunal, no one was allowed to violate "the law of the land."

"No government is allowed to violate any law of the land and nobody is doing that," he said. "I can only suggest at this moment, that the chief ministers can sit and talk and try to resolve the issue. The matter has already been to the tribunal and the tribunal has given its award, but in spite of that negotiated settlement will be a better settlement," Joshi said.

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(Published 09 September 2019, 16:50 IST)

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