Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Karnataka never fully implemented Cauvery Tribunal's order: T.N.

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI Feb. 6. Counsel for Tamil Nadu, K.K. Venugopal, today told the Supreme Court hearing the Cauvery case, that ever since the interim order was passed by the Cauvery Tribunal in June 1991, Karnataka had never fully implemented the Tribunal's orders and whatever Tamil Nadu received was only "surpluses" from the four reservoirs in Karnataka.

A three-Judge Bench comprising Justice R.C. Lahoti, Justice Y.K. Sabharwal and Justice Arijit Pasaayat later directed Karnataka to release 4,500 cusecs (amounting to 0.4 tmcft) of water a day at the Mettur Dam from tomorrow till the Cuuvery River Authority, headed by the Prime Minister, took a decision at its meeting on February 10.

Earlier Mr. Venugopal and senior counsel, C.S. Vaidyanathan, drew the court's attention to the "intransigence and defiance" of Karnataka to the orders of the Supreme Court and that of the CRA.

He said instead of complying with the orders, the Karnataka Chief Minister went on a padayatra stating that the orders were unimplementable.

Mr. Venugopal said that this year, while Karnataka was entitled to utilise only 83 tmcft of water as per the distress sharing formula, it had utilised 115 tmcft of water.

As a result, the entire `kuruvai' crops on 11 lakh acres were destroyed due to non-release of water by Karnataka and the standing `samba' crops on five lakh acres were facing the same fate.

He pointed out that `samba' crops planted in three lakh acres were already lost due to water scarcity. The rest of the crops also would meet the same fate if 10,000 cusecs of water was not immediately released on a daily basis for at least one wetting.

Mr. Nariman submitted that after the Prime Minister wrote a letter to the Karnataka Chief Minister on January 14, the State had released more waters than what was required under the interim award of the Tribunal for January and February. He read the Centre's affidavit which said that substantial quantity of water had been released by Karnataka.

He said the present storage in the four reservoirs was hardly sufficient to meet the State's drinking water requirements. However, as a gesture, it could release 1,200 cusecs a day till the CRA took a decision at its meeting on February 10.

The Attorney-General, Soli Sorabjee, explained to the court as to how the two previous meetings of the CRA could not be held on November 29 last and January 13. He requested the court to pass orders that the meeting should be held irrespective of quorum and that the decision of the Prime Minister be given the sanctity of the court order. He said going by the past experience, unless this was done the entire exercise of talks would become meaningless.

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