SC to hear Cauvery water issue on Sept 10

The plea by the Tamil Nadu Government was made after the Centre told a bench comprising justices D K Jain and Madan Lokur that a meeting of Cauvery River Authority (CRA) headed by the Prime Minister will be held on September 19.

The Bench on September 3 had pulled up the PMO officials for not holding a meeting of CRA to resolve the water-sharing dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

While seeking interim arrangement, Tamil Nadu Government said that one crop has already been destroyed due to deficit rain and second crop will also face the crisis due to shortage of irrigational water.

However, Karnataka Government opposed the plea saying that the figure provided for the release of water was not correct as in 2002 Tamil Nadu was getting 46TMC but now it is claiming that the water has been reduced to 22TMC.

The bench said it will consider the issue on Monday after getting proper information about the reduction of water.

The matter was listed for hearing four days after the bench had expressed surprise that the meeting of CRA, comprising chief ministers of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala, had not taken place as the PMO was trying to fix a date convenient to all members.

The court had asked the Centre to inform it about the meeting of CRA.

The Centre on August 30 had told the apex court that it would soon convene a CRA meeting, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to consider Tamil Nadu's plea for release of 25.373 tmfct (thousand million cubic feet) of water from Cauvery river to save the state's standing crops. (MORE)