INDIA BUSINESS WORLD - APRIL - MAY 2007
The Month that was ...

KERALA MOVES SC FOR STAY ON CAUVERY

The Kerala government has moved the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the Cauvery Water Tribunal award on the water distribution of the 'Southern Ganga' among four neighbouring southern states. In a special leave petition filed before the apex court, Kerala has expressed apprehensions that the award, if allowed to be implemented, would seriously jeoparadise various pending and future irrigation projects planned by the state.

The state has charged the Tribunal with adopting an irrational approach while framing the award and cited the allocation of a mere 30 TMCft (thousand million cubic feet) to it, as against Kerala's claim of 99.8 TMCft. According to Kerala, even the allocation of 30 TMCft was entirely illusory, if one takes into account that the State has 'generously' given 31.3 TMCft from its own basins to the Cauvery basin area in the State of Tamil Nadu. As a result, the net allocation for Kerala was now only 1.3 TMCft, the State claimed. Kerala submitted that by denying transbasin transfers, the Tribunal has deprived it of the opportunity of completing important projects like Banasurasagar, Mananthvady and Kerala Bhavani which together required 35 TMCft of water from the Cauvery.

Finding fault with the method adopted by the CWDT in calculating the award, Kerala complained that the tribunal had taken as the starting point the inequitable imperial treaties of 1892 and 1924 to which the state was never a party.