Tamil Nadu awaits Cauvery tribunal final verdict

India's News.Net
Sunday 4th February, 2007 (IANS)

Tamil Nadu's water wars with its neighbours are due to hot up once again, beginning with a tribunal delivering its final verdict on the state's share of the Cauvery river water with Karnataka on Monday.

It is not only the water of the Cauvery river that Tamil Nadu is disputing with its neighbours, it is also in disagreement over the waters of the Palar river with Andhra Pradesh and over the Periyar, the Sholayar and Aliyar rivers with Kerala.

However, the biggest and the best known of the disputes is, of course, with Karnataka over the Cauvery river water use since 1807.

The river begins in Talakaveri on the Brahmagiri range of the Western Ghats, in Coorg district Karnataka, at a height of 4,400 ft above the sea. The catchments area of the entire Cauvery basin is 81,155-sq km, with Karnataka enjoying 34,273 sq km and Tamil Nadu 43,868 sq km.

In 1881, when the king of Mysore wanted to use the Cauvery water for irrigation, the Madras Presidency, under the British, objected as Cauvery is an east-flowing river, and naturally a major part of its water flows to Tamil Nadu.

In 1892, the then King of Mysore signed an agreement with Madras Presidency for water use. In 1910, Mysore wanted to build a dam at Kannambadi village. The dam was supposed to hold 11 thousand million cubic metres (TMC) of water at first and finally hold 41 TMC.

Madras Presidency entered the one-upmanship race with a plan to store 80 TMC at a dam in Mettur in Salem district. This set the kingdom of Mysore at loggerheads with Madras Presidency. The dispute was referred to the then government that let Mysore build its dam, but store only 11 TMC of water. Mysore built a dam that could hold 40 TMC. The war between Mysore and Madras Presidency escalated.

For the first time, the then Government of India referred the matter to arbitration. Arbitrators H.D. Griffin gave the first Cauvery water award in 1914, saying Mysore could hold only 11 TMC water and not increase its area under irrigation to more than 110,000 acres. The cap for Madras Presidency was 301,000 acres.

Mettur dam was built with an initial capacity to hold 93 TMC water. A fresh 50-year agreement between Mysore and Madras Presidency was inked in 1924.

This is the basis of all present references. Karnataka insists the agreement was biased in favour of Madras (now Tamil Nadu) under the British rulers. By the 1960s talks began for a new deal between the two states.

A Cauvery Fact Finding Committee (CFFC) was constituted which submitted its report in 1973. The next year, a draft agreement for a Cauvery Valley Authority was prepared by the central ministry of irrigation. Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Pondicherry which gets some Cauvery water, agreed.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu's irrigated land area stood at a huge 2.4 million acres while Karnataka's was less than 500,000 acres.

In 1977, when the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam came to power it rejected the draft agreement and demanded that everyone go back to the 1892 or 1924 treaty.

Karnataka began building another dam, Harangi dam, at Kodagu and Tamil Nadu went to court demanding the constitution of a tribunal under the Inter State Water Disputes Act (ISWD) of 1956. In 1990, the V.P. Singh government in New Delhi constituted the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, with three high court judges as members. In 1991, the tribunal gave its interim award.

It directed Karnataka to give 205 TMC ft of water for Mettur from June to May every year until the final adjudication of the dispute.

Karnataka is awaiting the tribunal's final verdict with suspicion.

Among the other water sharing disagreements, the Parambikkulam-Aliyar dispute between Kerala and Tamil Nadu is 15 years old. The Mullaperiyar dam in Thekkady district is owned and operated by Tamil Nadu according to a 999-year lease between the British and the then Raja of Travancore. Tamil Nadu wants to raise its height now.

Tamil Nadu is also fighting a battle with Andhra Pradesh over a new check dam over Palar river, which is due to begin mid-February.

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