New Delhi
\nThe Supreme Court today raised the 270 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) share of Cauvery waters for Karnataka by 14.75 tmcft and reduced Tamil Nadu\u2019s share while compensating it by allowing extraction of 10 tmcft groundwater from the river basin, saying the issue of drinking water has to be placed on a \u201chigher pedestal\u201d.<\/p>\n
The court, which referred to international rules of Helsinki, Compione and Berlin on equitable distribution of river waters passing through various nations, said that river was a national asset and no state could claim \u201cexclusive ownership\u201d of such waters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe waters of an inter-state river passing through the corridors of riparian states constitute national asset and cannot be said to be located in any one state. Being in a state of flow, no state can claim exclusive ownership of such waters or assert a prescriptive right so as to deprive the other states of their equitable share,\u201d a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said.<\/p>\n
The Bench justified the increase in Karnataka\u2019s share taking note of the principle on drinking water and the \u201cglobal status\u201d acquired by the state capital and the IT city of Bengaluru. \u201cDrinking water requirement of the overall population of all the states has to be placed on a higher pedestal as we treat it as a hierarchically fundamental principle of equitable distribution,\u201d it said. The Bench gave six weeks to the Centre to formulate a scheme to ensure compliance of its 465-page judgment, modifying the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (CWDT) award, and made it clear it would not extend time on any ground.<\/p>\n
It said the order on Cauvery water allocation would continue for the next 15 years. Karnataka would now have to release 177.25 tmcft of water at the inter-state border with Tamil Nadu.<\/p>\n
The Bench rejected the Centre\u2019s contention that the court should not issue any direction, keeping in mind the bar imposed under Article 363 which deals with restrictions on courts in interfering in disputes arising out of \u201ccertain treaties, agreements\u201d.<\/p>\n
The apex court had on December 9, 2016, upheld the maintainability of appeals filed by riparian states, saying it had the \u201cjurisdiction to decide the parameters, scope, authority and jurisdiction of the tribunal\u201d.<\/p>\n
The court had rejected the Centre\u2019s objection that the CWDT award amounted to a final decree and it had no jurisdiction to hear appeals against the award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi The Supreme Court today raised the 270 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) share of Cauvery waters for Karnataka by 14.75 tmcft and reduced Tamil Nadu\u2019s share while compensating it by allowing extraction of 10 tmcft groundwater from the river basin, saying the issue of drinking water has to be placed on a \u201chigher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22188,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22186\/revisions\/22188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}