The Supreme Court on Friday asked if the States of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka could amicably settle their quarrel over the allocation of the Krishna river water.
“Why don’t you settle through mediation,” Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana asked senior advocate Shyam Diwan, appearing for Karnataka.
Mr. Diwan, however, said some of the questions involved in the case required adjudication and final determination.
The senior lawyer urged the CJI, in a mentioning, to constitute a Bench soon. The CJI assured he would look into the request.
On January 10, a Bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and A.S. Bopanna, which was earlier assigned the case, had both recused.
Justice Chandrachud is from Maharashtra and Justice Bopanna hailed from Karnataka.
“We do not want to be targets of invective,” Justice Chandrachud had said then.
Some of the lawyers had pointed out that the court was hearing the dispute for the past two to three years.
The Bench had, however, ordered the court registry to place it before a Bench in which neither Justices Chandrachud nor Bopanna were members after getting the consent of the Chief Justice of India.
The Supreme Court hearing had seen verbal battles among the States, with Telangana submitting that there was no information forthcoming from Karnataka for the past 14 years about how much Krishna River water it had diverted.
In turn, Karnataka had argued that a lot of water was going to waste, “flowing down into the ocean” and there was a need to harness it for irrigation and to replenish dry regions.
Karnataka had sought the vacation of a November 16, 2011 order of the Supreme Court which stopped the Centre from publishing in the Official Gazette the final order of the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal II (KWDT) pronounced in December 2010, allocating the river water to Karnataka, erstwhile Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.
The KWDT had further modified its final order and report on November 29, 2013 to allot surplus water to Karnataka, Maharashtra and the erstwhile State of Andhra Pradesh while preserving the allocation of 2130 TMC already made amongst them.
The publication of the order of the Tribunal is a necessary pre-condition for its implementation.
However, following the bifurcation of unified Andhra Pradesh, its successors Telangana and Andhra Pradesh had moved the Supreme Court challenging the KWDT’s allocation of shares.
Karnataka had argued that its thousands of crores of dam and irrigation projects to provide water to its parched northern areas were stalled for all these years because of the 2011 order of the Supreme Court to not publish the KWDT decisions in the Official Gazette under Section 6(1) of the Inter-State Water Disputes Act of 1956.
Karnataka has argued that the dispute raised by Andhra Pradesh and Telangana was between them and did not concern it.
The court had noted that several years had elapsed since the KWDT pronounced its modified final report and order.
