Cauvery River Water Sharing Dispute - AIADMK MPs petition Prime Minister Tuesday Oct 04,2016

A delegation of AIADMK parliamentary members marched to the Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday Oct 04,2016 and submitted a memorandum seeking constitution of the Cauvery Management Board to ensure implementation of the final award on sharing of the river water among Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala.

But it proved to be nothing more than an academic exercise as by the time the delegation reached the PMO, events had overtaken with the Centre on Monday owning up its mistake in the Supreme Court that it had erred in committing to constitute the Board without realising that it can only be done with the sanction of Parliament.

Besides on Tuesday, acting on the plea of the Union government, the Supreme Court put on hold its order to the Narenda Modi government to constitute a Cauvery Management Board and agreed to the Centre’s suggestion that a “technical team” study the “ground reality.”

Syamal Kumar Sarkar, who was the Secretary in the Water Resources Ministry when the final award on sharing of Cauvery water was notified in 2013, told  “In 1991 when the interim award was notified, the Centre had constituted a Cauvery River Authority (CRA) headed by the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers of the concerned States. When the final award came the Centre could not prepare a scheme under Section 6 (A) of the Interstate River Disputes Act, 1956 for its implementation as some issues were pending in the Supreme Court.”

According to him in 2013, when it was a year of poor rainfall, the Centre on the directions of the Supreme Court had sent a high-level team to Tamil Nadu for a first hand assessment of the damage to crops and a report was submitted.