The Supreme Court on Monday directed Karnataka to furnish all the information on amount of Cauvery river water shared by it to Tamil Nadu since 1992 and said that out of box thinking is required on the part of warring states to sort out the dispute.
A bench of justices R M Lodha and J Chelameswar asked Karnataka to submit its report tomorrow when it will hear the plea on passing intermin direction on sharing of water by the two states. The bench also observed that requirement of drinking water for Karnataka should be given priority over water needed by Tamil Nadu for irrigation purpose and some out of box thinking is required to balance the demand of two states.
“Some equitable sharing has to be done. Some out of box thinking is required. There has to be some interim solution,” the bench said while pulling Karnataka for not adhering to the formula of water sharing. Earlier on December 5, the Supreme Court had directed Karnataka to release 10,000 cusecs of Cauvery water daily to its neighbouring state and asked Cauvery Monitoring Committee (CMC) to hold a meeting to decide the amount of water required by each state.
Cusec is a measure of flow rate of water and is abbreviation for cubic feet per second (which is equivalent to a flow of 28.317 litres per second) and 11,000 cusecs flow for a day amounts to 1 TMC (1,000 million cubic feet) water.
The committee had then directed Karnataka to provide Tamil Nadu with 12 TMC of Cauvery water during December and did not pass any order for the month of January as the Centre had assured the apex court that it would notify the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal award by December 31.
