Chennai: Cauvery Management Board, as and when it is constituted, will be a shot in the arm for Tamil Nadu in its decades long fight for its rightful share of Cauvery river water as the proposed institution would take a call on the release of water to states and bring the reservoirs across the disputed river under its direct supervision.
Ever since the award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal was notified in the gazette, Tamil Nadu’s political leaders led by Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa have been demanding the consecutive Union governments and Prime Ministers to immediately constitute Cauvery Management Board (CMB) to ensure that justice is done to the state by implementing the February 2007 final award of the tribunal. The CWDT in its final report had mandated constitution of CMB.
“It is truly a momentous occasion. We have won the case legally after having gone to the Supreme Court several decades ago. I am certain constitution of the Cauvery Management Board takes time and that is the reason that the Supreme Court has given a month’s time to the Union Government. Hope all goes fine during this crucial period,” Mannargudi S. Ranganathan, who filed the first writ petition on the Cauvery River dispute in 1983 in the Supreme Court, told Deccan Chronicle.
The CMB would be advantage Tamil Nadu, farmers and state government officials feel, because the state has got the maximum quantum of water allotted by the CWDT and it has always been at the mercy of Karnataka Government for release of water from Cauvery.
Once the CMB is constituted and comes into force, it will have absolute powers to ensure the implementation of the award by the CWDT. The CMB will be constituted on the lines of the famous Bhakra Beas Management Board that will be fiercely independent in its functioning and empowered to take decisions on release of water to lower riparian states like Tamil Nadu by the higher riparian state of Karnataka.
The proposed body will have powers to even supervise operation of reservoirs like the Krishnaraja Sagar in Mysuru and Mettur in Tamil Nadu that store water from Cauvery river and regulation of water releases there from with the assistance of Cauvery Water Regulation Committee, which would be constituted by the CMB after it comes into existence.
The fact that all reservoirs built over river Cauvery would come under the direct supervision of the CMB and the Central Water Commission is the real reason behind Karnataka’s opposition to notification of the CWDT in gazette and constitution of Cauvery Management Board.
“It is not just the reservoirs in Karnataka, but those in Tamil Nadu would also come under the supervision of the CMB. Once it happens, there will be no problem since the Central teams would decide everything. No state government will have a role in (release of water),” Mr Ranganathan says.
The CMB’s job will be to ensure that the award given by the CWDT and notified by the Union Government is implemented in letter and spirit. The Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal had in a unanimous decision in 2007 allotted 419 tmcft to Tamil Nadu in the entire Cauvery basin of which Karnataka has to release 192 tmcft every year, 270 tmcft to Karnataka, 30 tmcft to Kerala and 7 tmcft to Puducherry.
Even during her meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 14 this year, Ms Jayalalithaa had urged him for early formation of the Cauvery Management Board and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee for effective implementation of the Final Order of the Tribunal.
