Krishna Water Dispute: Karnataka, Telangana advocates engage in heated argument

Katarki further said that since the water is allocated at 75% dependability, there are bound to be shortages in 25% of the years

Karnataka and Telangana advocates engaged in heated exchanges in the Supreme Court on Thursday during the hearing of pleas related to the notification of the Krishna Water Dispute Tribunal-2 final award.

Justices Suryakant and V Ramasubramanian started hearing petitions by Krishna basin states Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Karnataka and Maharashtra sought an early notification of the KWDT-2 final award delivered in 2013, while Telangana and Andhra Pradesh wanted fresh allocation of water among all river basin states.

When senior advocate C S Vaidyanathan, representing Telangana, tried to accuse Karnataka of holding water and not releasing the share of Telangana and AP, senior counsel Mohan Katarki for Karnataka countered by pointing at the data that in two decades only in one year in 2015-16, the flows have been less than 442 tmc which Karnataka is expected to ensure annually to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana jointly.

Read | Delay in notifying Krishna award big blow to Karnataka, Supreme Court told

Katarki said that since the water is allocated at 75% dependability, there are bound to be shortages in 25% of the years. Katarki also said erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh didn’t ask for guaranteed flows before KWDT 1 or KWDT 2 and it is too late to demand guaranteed flows at interstate contact points.

When Justice Ramasubramanian asked what happens to the remaining water at present, Katarki said it’s going to the sea. Out of these large surpluses to the sea, KWDT 2 has estimated a utilisable surplus of 448 tmc and allocated 195 tmc to erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, 173 tmc to Karnataka, and 81 tmc to Maharashtra, the Karnataka advocate said. He contended that despite erstwhile Andhra Pradesh getting the lion’s share, the successor states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are challenging the award.

Vaidyanathan, for his part, said Karnataka has not come to the court with clean hands since, it has spent Rs 15,000 crores at its own risk and without obtaining any technical clearance from Central Water Commission and Niti Ayog to Upper Krishna Project Stage 3.

After three days of hearings, the matter was adjourned. The bench granted liberty to Karnataka and Maharashtra to mention before the Chief Justice of India for early re-notification of the bench to complete the hearing.