New Delhi: Amid the political tussle between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka governments over the constitution of the Cauvery Management Board, the central government has moved the Supreme Court with a plea to clarify certain issues.
The application will be mentioned on Monday before Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra for an urgent hearing.
Filing its application on Saturday, the central government has sought the intervention of the court to guide the Centre how to move ahead when the state governments have taken diametrically opposite stands on the basis of their own interpretation of the Supreme Court verdict.
While the court had asked the Centre to frame a 'scheme' for ensuring compliance of its directive on distribution of Cauvery waters among the states, the state governments have been at loggerheads over the meaning of the term 'scheme'.
Tamil Nadu government has pressed for setting up the Cauvery Management Board (CMB) in terms of the order by the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal. But the Karnataka government has opposed it, saying the Supreme Court verdict talked about a 'scheme' and not the 'board'.
The discord came out in the open during a recent meeting called upon by the Centre and hence no decision could be taken as to how to take the matter forward.
This stalemate over the body, which would monitor the water sharing, also breached the six-week deadline set by the court on February 16 for framing a 'scheme'.
On Saturday, the central government, thus, approached the top court for a clarification in this regard.
It has sought to know whether the Centre could frame a scheme different from what was envisaged by the Water Tribunal as the Board.
In case the answer to this question is in the negative and the court feels that the 'scheme' it ordered has to be the 'Board' only, the Centre seeks other clarifications.
It has sought to know if the Board can be a mixture of administrative and technical body and not just a technical body, as was directed by the Tribunal. The Tribunal had made chief engineers and other technical experts as the only members comprising the Board.
Besides, the central government has asked the court whether the Board can be assigned functions apart from just monitoring and ensuring the water-sharing pattern.
Having already breached the deadline, the Centre is seeking three months more to comply with the further direction by the court regarding setting up of the body.
Constitution of the Board in terms of the Tribunal's order will, in fact, take away the entire control from the Karnataka government regarding the statistics on Cauvery water, river water, collection in dams etc.
The scheme of the Board is such that technical members will have all the information and the control with respect to the Cauvery waters. And this happens to be the most contentious point in a dispute that has been ongoing for decades between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka — which has the advantage of being the upper riparian state.
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