Cauvery dispute: Supreme Court directs to give additional water to Karnataka
New Delhi, Feb 16 (IBNS): The Supreme Court has ordered an increase in water share for Karnataka while delivering a judgement on the Cauvery river dispute on Friday, media reports said.
Karnataka will get an additional 14.75 tmc of water. Hence Tamil Nadu's water share has been reduced from 192 tmc to 177.25 tmc.
Delivering the verdict, the three judge bench, which included Chief Justice Dipak Misra, observed that the river water must be shared by all states and it does not belong to any particular state.
The Cauvery river waters are shared by four southern states-Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
The states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala were warring over the river water sharing. The sharing of waters has been a big conflict between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in particular with decades of talks and negotiations led to no resolution of the dispute the genesis of which was in the agreements in 1892 and 1924 between the erstwhile Madras Presidency and Kingdom of Mysore.
Last year, several Cauvery delta farmers from Tamil Nadu came to Delhi with a demand of more water share after being hit by drought.
The Cauvery which flows through the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is the third largest river after Godavari and Krishna in south india and considered lifeline of Tamil Nadu and Southern Karnataka.
The Kaveri basin is estimated to be 81,155 sq km with many tributaries including Harangi, Hemavati, Kabini, Bhavani, Arkavathy, Lakshmana Tirtha, Noyyal and Amaravati. The river's basin covers three states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala besides the Union Territory of Puducherry.
The central government had set up a tribunal- CWDT or Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal- in 1990 to deal with the dispute.
In Feb 2007 the tribunal delivered its final verdict allocating 419 tmc of water annually to Tamil Nadu and 284.75 tmc to Karnataka; 30 tmc of water to Kerala and 7 tmc to Puducherry.
Karnataka was ordered to release 177.25 tmc of water to Tamil Nadu in a normal year from June to May.
However, all four states filed review petitions and the dispute continued.
While in 2013, the central government had notified the final award the dispute lingered. Last year in Sept, the Supreme Court reserved its judgement on the CWDT’s final award.
Image:Creative Commons
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