By IANS
New Delhi : The Tamil Nadu government Friday told the Supreme Court that Karnataka was violating a tribunal order on sharing of the Cauvery river waters by building dams and other irrigation schemes and asked for a direction to halt the work.
A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justice R.V. Raveendran asked the Karnataka government to respond to Tamil Nadu’s plea within two weeks.
In its application filed through advocate R. Nedumaran, Tamil Nadu sought the apex court’s direction to Karnataka to halt the check dams and commissioning of irrigational projects on the river as it violated the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal order given last February.
Tamil Nadu also contended in its petition that the check dams built by Karnataka would hamper the flow of water to it.
“Karnataka in utter defiance of the final order passed by the tribunal is unilaterally proceeding with the construction of check dams, commissioning of lift irrigation scheme and desiltation of tanks,” the Tamil Nadu government said.
It added that the Karnataka government’s actions were “leading to additional storage capacity of water in the state aimed at consuming all the Cauvery water in the state itself, hampering the Cauvery flow to downstream states of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry”.
Tamil Nadu also said that though the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal had approved of commissioning of only one irrigation scheme by Karnataka, it was going ahead with commissioning over a dozen such schemes.
The tribunal, in its long-awaited judgement last year, allocated the largest share of water to Tamil Nadu at 419 thousand million cubic (TMC) feet while giving neighbouring Karnataka 270 TMC.
The tribunal, formed in 1990 and headed by former justice N.P. Singh, also gave Kerala 30 TMC ft and the union territory of Puducherry seven TMC ft.