Cauvery water dispute: Centre presents water-sharing draft proposal before Supreme Court

File photo

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Monday presented the draft proposal to the Supreme Court outlining the water-sharing between Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry in the decades-old Cauvery water dispute.

"We need to examine whether the said scheme is in consonance with our judgment," the SC bench, consisting of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, as reported by news agency PTI.

The bench added that it would consider and approve the scheme on May 16.

The top court said that it will not go into "correctness of the scheme" and rather confine itself to whether the scheme was in consonance with its February 16 judgment. 

On February 16, the Supreme Court, in a significant verdict to resolve the decades-old Cauvery river water dispute, increased Karnataka's quota by 14.75 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft), taking it to to 270 tmcft. It reduced Tamil Nadu's share to 404.25 tmcft, while allowing it to extract 10 tmcft of groundwater from the river basin.

The Supreme Court ordered the Centre to set up the Cauvery Management Board (CMB), and had given it six weeks to do so. That deadline lapsed at the end of March, with the Centre seeking extensions. 

On May 8, the SC warned the Centre that it was in "sheer contempt" of the February 16 verdict by not framing the Cauvery management scheme on river water sharing between the four southern riparian states till now.