The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to interfere with the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) order directing Karnataka to release 5,000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu between September 13 to September 29.
A bench of Justice B.R. Gavai, Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra while refusing to interfere with the May 13 CWMA direction said that both the CWMA and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC) are regularly meeting and monitoring the water requirements every 15 days.
The bench said that it was not inclined to interfere with the order passed on this aspect by the authority, since the authority and committee were meeting and monitoring the situation every 15 days.
The bench upheld the allocation of 5000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu, as Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Aishwarya Bhati told the court that allocation of Cauvery water is not just based on the calculation of shortfall in water due to less rainfall but many other factors and it is not the mathematical calculation based on the Cauvery Water Tribunal Award.
ASG Bhati told the bench that both the expert bodies have domain experts from both the States.
Rohatgi told the bench that as per the award modified by the top court by its February 16, 2018, Judgment, Tamil Nadu was entitled to 46 and 36 tmc of water (Thousand Million Cubic feet) in August and September respectively but even if considering the shortfall in the rains, yet Tamil Nadu should have got 19.15 tmc 9.3 tmc of water in these two months. This translates into 7200 cusecs of water per day and the same is further reduced by 25% in the allocated 5000 cusecs of water.
Rohatgi said that he needs water to irrigate standing crops over five-lakh acres of land.
Senior advocate Shyam Divan appearing for Karnataka told the bench that Tamil Nadu needs water for irrigation, whereas Karnataka needs it both for the drinking purposes and the irrigation. He said Cauvery water meets the drinking water requirements of Bengaluru, Mysore and one more city.
Shyam Divan told the bench that besides Cauvery water, Tamil Nadu also gets North-East monsoon.