By Poojil Tiwari
The Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed its intention of delivering a final verdict on the decades-old Cauvery Water Dispute within four weeks. Enough of confusion has been there for past two decades. Any forum can touch the matter after the verdict is delivered in the issue. We will give the verdict in four weeks, PTI quoted the Supreme Court as saying. The sharing of the waters of the Cauvery river has been a bone of contention between the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka for the past four decades with both states seeing widespread violence, as no concrete legal resolution has been found.
A look at The Cauvery Water Dispute
The Cauvery river originates in Karnataka and flows into Tamil Nadu before feeding into the Bay of Bengal. The roots of the conflict lie in two agreements signed in 1892 and 1924 between the erstwhile Madras Presidency and Kingdom of Mysore. On 2nd January 1990, the Government of India constituted the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) to adjudicate on the issue. On February 2007, the Tribunal delivered its final verdict, dividing the water between the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Pondicherry and Kerala. However, this was challenged by petitioners from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Tamil Nadu believes that Karnataka is monopolising the water of the river by holding it back in its reservoirs, whereas Karnataka claims that Tamil Nadu is asking for more water than it actually needs. On January 9, Tamil Nadu had sought a compensation of ? 2,480 crores from the Karnataka government, for not releasing water to the state despite orders from the Supreme Court. While the Apex Court dismissed the claim, it directed Karnataka to release 2000 cusecs of water.
Fragmenting inter-state relations
Over the past two decades, the conflict has also manifested into communal violence and riots, marring the relations between the two states. On September 5, 2017, a Supreme Court order directed Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs of water from its reservoir to provide relief to drought-stricken farmers in Tamil Nadu. This resulted in mass protests across the state with calls of Cauvery belongs to Karnataka. Demonstrators vandalized public property and set fire to cars and buses. Previously in 1991, riots in Bangalore against Tamils over the Cauvery Water dispute left 18 people dead. Post this, while the apex court reduced the quantity to 12,000 cusecs, the issue has not seen a final resolution. As the monsoon winds wind down in September, both states face a scarcity of water, especially for drinking and irrigation purposes. The conflict has particularly escalated in the past few years due to Karnataka facing an acute shortage of water.
BPAC and the issue of water scarcity
In September 2016, Bangalore Political Action Committee (BPAC), a citizens group led by philanthropist Kiran Mazumdar Shaw moved the Supreme Court, seeking intervention in the Cauvery dispute over issues of water scarcity in the city. Karnataka as a whole has been facing a severe water crisis, having experienced its fourth season of scarce monsoons. Less than 20% water is left in 9 out of 12 of Karnatakas dams. As per a 2016 report by Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru has lost 79% of its water bodies as 98% of the lakes have been encroached upon. Furthermore, the discharge of toxic effluents into its water bodies has rendered most of them unfit for drinking.
Citing the acute shortage of drinking water in the city, the BPAC in its petition to the Supreme Court said, the southwest monsoon for the year 2016-17 has miserably failed over most parts of Karnataka and especially in the catchment areas of the Cauvery River. There is an acute drinking water problem in the city of Bengaluru and certain other districts of South Karnataka. The annual requirement of Bengaluru city alone is more than 19 TMC of water to be supplied to the citizens by the authorities of the State of Karnataka. The annual drinking water requirements of the Cauvery basin districts including the Bengaluru is roughly about 26 TMC. As per the BPAC, if more water were to be released to Tamil Nadu from Karnatakas reservoirs, it would lead to a shortage of drinking water for its residents, thus adversely impacting the citizens right to life.
Need for a new mechanism
India is no stranger to inter-state water disputes. The Cauvery Water Dispute and the Satluj Yamuna Link Canal case are prime examples of how these water disputes foster communal violence and hamper cooperative federalism in the country. A large part of the problem also is the lack of a proper mechanism for the redressal of inter-state water disputes. At present, as per the Inter-State Water dispute act of 1956, most river water disputes are resolved by setting up tribunals to adjudicate on the same. However, this process has been marred by an extraordinary delay in the formation of the tribunals which is then followed by a delay in the verdict. A case in point would be the Cauvery Water Dispute, where the Tamil Nadu government had asked for a tribunal in 1970 while the tribunal was set up in 1990 after intervention by the Supreme Court. Despite the amendments made in 2002 that warranted that the tribunal should be set up within a year of getting the request, the Inter-State Water Disputes Act is plagued with issues. The tribunal bench only comprises of people from the judiciary, meaning that there exists very little difference between the tribunal and a Supreme Court Bench. Furthermore, if any private person or an interest group feels that Article 21 (Right to Life) is being violated, there exist provisions to reach out to the Supreme Court for the same, again leading to long periods of delay in judgement.
While we might get a final verdict on the Cauvery Water Dispute by the Supreme Court in four weeks, the Inter-State Water Dispute Act as a whole needs to be examined and the idea of doing away with the tribunal system needs to be contemplated.
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