Overcoming the stiff opposition from Karnataka and just before the expiry of the Supreme Court deadline, the Centre on Tuesday notified the Cauvery Waters Dispute Tribunal final award in the official gazette. With the notification, the tribunal’s award is all set to come into force within 90 days.
The Supreme Court had on February 4 set February 20 as the deadline for issuing the notification. It had said in its order that, “Since more than five years have elapsed, we direct the Central Government to publish in official gazette the final decision given by the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal dated February 5, 2007 as early as may be possible and in no case later than February 20, 2013.”
According to the final award that was arrived at unanimously by the tribunal, comprising chairman Justice N.P. Singh and members N.S. Rao and Sudhir Narain, Tamil Nadu was given 419 TMC of water (as against the demand of 562 TMC); Karnataka 270 TMC (as against its demand of 465 TMC); Kerala 30 TMC and Puducherry 7 TMC. 10 TMC water was reserved for environmental protection.
With the issuance of the notification, institutions like the Cauvery River Authority (CRA) and Cauvery Monitoring Committee (CMC) will cease to exist and instead be replaced by the Cauvery Management Board (CMB). Besides the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee, comprising representatives from all the co-basin states and experts in hydrology and agriculture, will be constituted. An officer from the Centre would head this and the supervisory powers over sharing of water would rest with the Union government.
On December 7 last year, the Centre had itself set a deadline of December 31 to notify the award. The then secretary of water resources Dhruv Vijai Singh, in a meeting of the CMC, had told the representatives of the four states that the notification would be done by the end of the month. But it was opposed by Karnataka on the ground that civil cases pertaining to the dispute are pending in the Supreme Court and they should be disposed of before the notification is done.