The legal battle over sharing of Cauvery river water is back in the news when Tamil Nadu is now formally petitioning the Supreme Court of India. The latest court petition has revived the interstate dispute and is challenging the quantum of water required by the regulatory authorities and also says neighbouring Karnataka has enough water in its reservoirs to release Tamil Nadu’s share.
In its legal plea, the state government in Tamil Nadu argued that as of early August, the four major reservoirs in Karnataka - Krishna Raja Sagar, Kabini, Harangi and Hemavati - hold about 77 thousand million cubic feet of water. Based on storage levels there, Karnataka should not have any difficulty in shipping water south of the city according to the Cauvery water sharing policy.
The source of Tamil Nadu’s frustration is that the recent allocations are not adequate. The state argues that Tamil Nadu should have 26 thousand million cubic feet of water at Biligundlu, which is the designated monitoring site for the interstate gauging on the border between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. However, the Cauvery Water Management Authority only provided for about 4.5 thousand million cubic feet of water yet.
State representatives argued that this limited amount of water is too little to meet basic agricultural needs, especially in the heavily dependent Cauvery delta area where farmers depend on timely and adequate water releases to grow crops. The Cauvery Water Management Authority had previously endorsed the recommendations of the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee and there are political debates in Karnataka about the legal response.
Political tension and long-standing differences. This fresh judicial battle is also brewing in the context of ongoing water sharing and a difficult Mekedatu balancing reservoir project. Karnataka officials have always defended the Mekedatu project as a crucial and long term infrastructure solution for regional water management and drinking water security. In contrast, Tamil Nadu is vehemently against it, and says the reservoir will reduce water flows downstream and violates existing judicial water-sharing arrangements.
We had to put a hold on a meeting between the regional leaders in the region in order for these deepening political disputes at the very high level because of the tension in the country when a high-level political meeting was cancelled due to these ongoing issues as well, when the Cauvery water dispute is still one of India's most difficult and long-standing interstate river disputes. Although the Supreme Court's decision of 2018 and the establishment of Cauvery Water Management Authority led to the framework of resource allocation on a formal basis, there are still serious disputes over the distribution of water in such variable rainfall that continue to fuel the legal and political conflict between the neighbouring states.
