‘Cauvery plan delayed as PM busy with K’taka polls’

NEWDELHI: The Centre on Thursday told the Supreme Court that it had been unable to frame the draft Cauvery water-sharing scheme by the May 3 deadline because “Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other central ministers were busy campaigning for the Karnataka assembly elections” scheduled for next week.

The Supreme Court had last month criticised the Centre for failing to come up with a plan to implement its verdict on the distribution of Cauvery waters, after the Centre sought three months to draft the scheme, which would defer it beyond the May 12 assembly elections in Karnataka where the watersharing formula is a contentious political issue.

Attorney General KK Venu- gopal on Thursday asked for 10 more days from the court to frame the draft scheme, saying that it needed to be vetted by the Cabinet and could not done till now because of non-availability of the prime minister, who after returning from recent foreign visits was busy with the Karnataka polls.

Expressing its displeasure over the delay by government, a bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra asked Venugopal: “Were you not supposed to frame the draft scheme by May 3 ?” The court asked the Centre to file an affidavit by May 8 stating the steps it had taken to frame a scheme that would ensuring the sharing of Cauvery waters among Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry.