SC reduces Tamil Nadu’s water share

> The Supreme Court said a 2007 ruling by a special tribunal on river-sharing had failed to take into account Bengaluru’s growing water needs and awarded a greater share to the southern state of Karnataka. > Known as the Silicon Valley of India, the Karnataka capital is one of the country’s fastestgrowing cities with a population of more than 10 million. > Justifying the cut in the share of Tamil Nadu, the court pointed to the empirical data which suggested that around 20 TMC of groundwater was available in Tamil Nadu — a position which the Cauvery Tribunal did not take into account describing it as a “conjecture”. > The river-sharing issue has become hugely emotive in Bengaluru, which suffered deadly protests in 2016 when the Supreme Court ordered Karnataka to release extra water from the Cauvery river to ease a shortage in neighbouring Tamil Nadu. > Hundreds of companies were forced to close and public transport services were cancelled as thousands took to the streets. > The modern dispute began in 1974, when an 1892 agreement on the sharing of the waters lapsed. > That was the year when the British Madras presidency, now Tamil Nadu state, forced the Maharaja-ruled Mysore — modern Karnataka state — not to use the Cauvery waters without its permission. > Cauvery flows through 800 km in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu into Bay of Bengal through Poompuhar in Tamil Nadu.

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