Cauvery: No consensus between Karnataka, TN

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refrained from passing any order for directing Karnataka to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu after the two states failed to sort out differences to reach a consensus on sharing water.

A bench of justices R M Lodha and J Chelameswar posted the case for hearing on February 4 after the two states gave contradictory views on the issue. Karnataka submitted that the apex court should not intvene at this stage on the findings of the Cauvery Monitoring Committee (CMC) as it should be first challenged before Cauvery River Authority (CRA) chaired by the Prime Minister.

But Tamil Nadu submitted that the apex court should pass an interim order directing Karnataka to release water during pendency of its plea before CRA.

The CMC had said that it would not be appropriate to decide that Karnataka should release more water to Tamil Nadu beyond 1.51 TMC (thousand million cubic feet).

Earlier on December 5, the Supreme Court had directed Karnataka to release 10,000 cusecs of Cauvery water daily to its neighbouring state and asked Cauvery Monitoring Committee (CMC) to hold a meeting to decide the amount of water required by each state.

Cusec is a measure of flow rate of water and is abbreviation for cubic feet per second (which is equivalent to a flow of 28.317 litres per second) and 11,000 cusecs flow for a day amounts to 1 TMC water. The committee had then directed Karnataka to provide Tamil Nadu with 12 TMC of Cauvery water during December and did not pass any order for the month of January as the Centre had assured the apex court that it would notify the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal award by December 31.