New Delhi: The Apex court on Tuesday directed the Karnataka government to adhere to its January 4 verdict and continue releasing 2,000 cusecs of Cauvery river water daily to Tamil Nadu.
A three-judge bench presided over by Justice Dipak Misra and comprising of Justices Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar passed the order while hearing Karnataka government’s plea expressing its inability to provide 2000 cusecs water daily to Tamil Nadu due to shortage of drinking water in the state.
Senior advocate F S Nariman, representing Karnataka, argued that the state was finding it difficult to meet its own drinking water and Tamil Nadu should join Karnataka in praying to God for more rains. Retorting that he was a rationalist, senior advocate Shekhar Naphade, representing Tamil Nadu, submitted that the order passed by the apex court had not been fully complied with by Karnataka.
The court, however, refused to pass any order on TN’s plea for stopping certain lift irrigation projects undertaken by Karnataka in the Cauvery basin districts.
“We can’t stop any project as of today,” the bench told Naphade, who alleged Karnataka continued to build different lift irrigation projects in violation of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal award of 2007.
The court though agreed to consider TN’s plea at the time of final hearing of civil appeals from July 11.
At the outset, TN complained before the bench that Kerala was going ahead with several projects and utilising water more than allocated to it.
However, Kerala’s counsel, senior advocate Jaydeep Gupta, gave an undertaking before the court that the state would not utilise more than the allocated water through any project or check dams. The court said his statement would be subject to the outcome of the civil appeals pending before it.
During the brief hearing, the court set modalities for final hearing of civil appeals in the water sharing dispute as the counsels, representing Karnataka, TN and Kerala agreed that arguments would be finished within 15 working days if the matter was heard the whole day between every Tuesday and Thursday from July 11.
