There goes final verdict! K'taka to file SLP on Cauvery

NEW DELHI: The Karnataka government has decided to move the Supreme Court against the verdict of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal verdict on sharing water with Tamil Nadu. This comes even as prime minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday said in the Lok Sabha that water should be treated as a national resource and should not divide people.

The Karnataka government announced that it had decided to file an `original suit’ and a Special Leave Petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court challenging the tribunal’s verdict.

The tribunal’s final award on February 5 had allocated 270 tmcft of water to Karnataka and asked it to release 192 tmc ft of water annually to Tamil Nadu. The award has led to large scale protests by farmers and other groups in the Cauvery basin districts of Mandya and Mysore.

Even the PM’s remarks came only after former prime minister H D Deve Gowda raised the issue. In an apparent reference to the Cauvery dispute, he said, ``I do not want to go into the issue of problems that have arisen with regard to the management of our nation’s water resources.’’

Replying to a debate on the motion of thanks on the president’s address in the Lok Sabha, the prime minister talked about the importance of putting viable and effective arrangements in place for quick resolution of disputes between states on water management.

``I call upon all political parties to treat water as a national resource and not an issue which should divide our people. We should all work together in a spirit of national unity and harmony to resolve these issues,’’ he said. Speaker Somnath Chatterjee assured the house that he would allow a discussion on the Cauvery dispute after Mr Gowda made a reference about the dispute, which led to protests from Tamil MPs.

The Karnataka government, hoping to stem ongoing protests, has decided to take recourse to a number of measures. The state cabinet decided to file an original suit under Article 131 of the constitution and an SLP under Article 136 of the constitution contesting the tribunal’s final verdict.

And the government has also decided to file a petition before the tribunal seeking clarification under Section 5 (3) of the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act.

Karnataka home minister M P Prakash said that as the original suit would take time, the state would file a SLP before the supreme court and later file the petition before the tribunal for clarifications. The state had 90 days to file a petition seeking a clarification from the tribunal on its order.

Under the arrangement, Tamil Nadu in total gets 419 tmc ft from the Cauvery. The tribunal had also allocated 30 tmc ft of water to Kerala and 9 tmc ft to Puducherry. Mr Prakash was quoted as saying that the decision to file three petitions was taken after consulting counsels who represented the state before the tribunal and also on the suggestions given by the state’s advocate-general Udaya Holla.

Karnataka would raise issues concerning the use of underground water, the tribunal’s order to release 21 tmc ft of water from Kabini, Kerala’s share to Tamil Nadu and challenge the tribunal order which had asked it to release four tmc ft of water to compensate for the water that flows into the sea, he said.