Inter-state river water disputes

Constitutional provisions :

• Entry 17 of State List deals with water i.e. water supply, irrigation, canal, drainage, embankments, water storage and water power.
• Entry 56 of Union List empowers the Union Government for the regulation and development of inter-state rivers and river valleys to the extent declared by Parliament to be expedient in the public interest.
• Article 262: In the case of disputes relating to waters, it provides

Clause 1: Parliament may by law provide for the adjudication of any dispute or complaint with respect to the use, distribution or control of the waters of, or in, any inter-State river or river valley.

Clause 2: Parliament may, by law provide that neither the Supreme Court nor any other court shall exercise jurisdiction in respect of any such dispute or complaint as mentioned above.

• Parliament laws : River Board Act, 1956, Inter-State Water Dispute Act, 1956

Reasons for delay in resolving river water disputes:

• Does not fix any time limit for resolving river water disputes. For example, only three out of eight Tribunals have given awards accepted by the States, while Tribunals like Cauvery and Ravi Beas have been in existence for over 26 and 30 years respectively without any award.
• Institutional Failures :
  • no upper age limit for the Chairman or the Members,
  • work getting stalled due to occurrence of any vacancy
  • Irregular sittings by tribunals
  • no time limit for publishing the report of the Tribunal. For instance, in the case of Godavari water dispute, the request was made in 1962, but the tribunal was constituted in 1968 and the award was given in 1979 which was published in the Gazette in 1980.
• Though award is final and beyond the jurisdiction of Courts, either States can approach Supreme Court under Article 136 (Special Leave Petition) under Article 32 linking issue with the violation of Article 21 (Right to Life).
• The composition of the tribunal is not multidisciplinary and it consists of persons only from the judiciary.
• The absence of authoritative water data that is acceptable to all parties currently makes it difficult to even set up a baseline for adjudication.
• Surface water is controlled by Central Water Commission (CWC) and ground water by Central Ground Water Board of India (CGWB). Both bodies work independently and there is no common forum for common discussion with state governments on water management.
• Vote bank politics : politicization has also led to increasing defiance by states, extended litigations and subversion of resolution mechanisms .For example, the Punjab government played truant in the case of the Ravi-Beas tribunal.
• Procedural complexities involving multiple stakeholders across governments and agencies.
• India’s complicated federal polity and its colonial legacy.

Merits of the bill:

• Creates a permanent infrastructure – reduces delay in constituting tribunal.
  • The Bill seeks to constitute a permanent tribunal, so there will be benches and one bench would be able to look at more than one issue/dispute. Hence, the process will be expedited.
• Also, like most commercial disputes, a pre-litigation dispute resolution process, which is attempted for a period of 18 months with the central government playing the role of arbitrator is present. And if the issue is not resolved within that period, it gets referred to the tribunal as a dispute.
• Timeline fixation proposed.
  • The Dispute Resolution Committee (DRC) will take 1 year extendable by 6 months to 1.5 years.
  • The main report will be prepared in 2 months.
    • Which means the entire deliberations and argumentation and all those will take 2 years extendable by 1 year, so a total of 3 years.
  • And the clarification that is required has to be decided within 1 year extendable by 6 months.

Way forward:

• Single, permanent tribunal with different benches – first step.
• However, this alone will not be able to address the different kinds of problems—legal, administrative, constitutional and political—that plague the overall framework.
• Centre’s proposal to set up an agency alongside the tribunal, which will collect and process data on river waters, can be a right step in this direction.
• Parochial mindset making regional issues superior to national issues should not be allowed.
• Dialogue and talks  for dispute resolution and the political opportunism must be avoided.
• A robust and transparent institutional framework with cooperative approach is need of the hour.
• Tribunals – toothless ( as their orders are disobeyed by the states ) For example, Karnataka Government disobeyed Cauvery River water tribunal award and is in ‘contempt of court’. Therefore Nationalization of all rivers.

Conclusion:

The bill is a step towards the cooperative federalism and will promote a prompt decision making in case of the various interstate water disputes. The solutions on water disputes will help in the socio economic development of stakeholder states. The implementation of the proposed steps in the bill in its true spirit will develop an integrated regime of river water utilization.