Supreme Court will decide on Cauvery water dispute in 4 weeks

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to entertain a PIL filed by Bangalore Political Action Committee (BPAC) for a direction to ensure adequate drinking water supply to the city but indicated that it would deliver within a month its verdict on the decades old Cauvery water dispute between riparian states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, saying enough confusion has been created on it for over two decades.   The top court said that any forum could touch the matter relating to the Cauvery basin, only after it gave its verdict in four weeks.

A three-judge bench of the apex court had reserved its verdict on the appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala against the 2007 award of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (CWDT) on sharing of water, after marathon hearing on September 20, 2017. "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," a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said.

BPAC, in its plea filed through lawyer Aparna Bhat said, “the south-west monsoon for the year 2016-17 has miserably failed over most parts of Karnataka and especially in the catchment areas of the Cauvery River. The lack of rainfall is also evident by the reservoir levels in the major reservoirs of the Cauvery basin in Karnataka, which have a huge shortfall of inflows, and thereby the drastic decrease in the storage capacities of the respective reservoirs.” “The approximate live storage of Karnataka’s reservoirs (Harangi, Hemavathi, K.R.S and Kabini) as on 16.09.2016 is only 28.77 TMC as against the total drinking water requirements of Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mandya and other Cauvery basin districts which is 26 TMC (approximately),” it said. If further releases are made to Tamil Nadu, then there would not be enough water available in these reservoirs for supply to the citizens of Bengaluru and other towns, it said. “This is indeed an alarming situation which requires urgent attention of the relevant authorities, and it is also the need of the hour that the present scenario is brought to the notice of this court,” the plea said.