The Hindu : SC hearing tomorrow on second contempt petition

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 10, 2002

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National

SC hearing tomorrow on second contempt petition

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI Oct. 9. The Supreme Court will hear on Friday a second contempt petition filed by Tamil Nadu to summon the Karnataka Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, and punish him for "wilful" disobedience of the September 3 and October 4 orders of the apex court to release water to the Mettur reservoir.

A three-Judge Bench comprising Justice V.N. Khare, Justice Ashok Bhan and Justice S.B. Sinha fixed October 11 for hearing the matter during `mention' time, when senior counsel for Tamil Nadu, C.S. Vaidyanathan, pleaded for issuing notice to the alleged contemnors, including the Karnataka Minister for Water Resources, H.K. Patil and its Chief Secretary, A. Ravindra.

Tamil Nadu submitted that the first contempt notice was issued to Mr. Krishna and others on September 23. Even as this was pending, the court had on October 4 considered the report of the Cauvery Monitoring Committee and directed Karnataka to release 9,000 cusecs of water daily.

On October 5, the Karnataka Cabinet took a unanimous decision that it would not comply with the court's October 4 orders. It was thus obvious that Karnataka was wilfully defying the court orders.

The gross and aggravated contempt committed by Karnataka, its Cabinet and the officers not only undermined the high prestige and dignity of the Supreme Court but was also evidence of a serious breakdown of the constitutional machinery in the State.

Under Article 262 of the Constitution, waters of inter-State rivers were a national resource to be shared among the States through which the rivers flow. An upper riparian State could not lay claim to all the waters in a river for its own people to the exclusion of the needs of the people of the lower riparian State. "Yet that is exactly the approach taken by Karnataka,'' Tamil Nadu's petition said.

"Not only are they prepared to ignore the orders of the CRA chaired by no less a constitutional authority than the Prime Minister, they have shown that they are willing to commit even gross and aggravated contempt of the orders of the apex court. Such disobedience of court orders amounted to constitutional anarchy insofar as it endangered the rule of law and the quasi-federal structure that underpinned our constitutional scheme", the petition said.

"It is unfortunate that the Chief Minister of a State should embark upon a `padayatra' obviously to heighten the resistance of the farmers with a view to ensuring that the implementation of the orders of the apex court would be resisted''.

Giving various instances when the Supreme Court had ordered the payment of compensation, the petition sought a direction to Karnataka to compensate Tamil Nadu (for the loss of the `kuruvai' and `samba' crops) for each day of delay in complying with the court orders.

It also sought a direction to the Centre to ensure the implementation of the orders, including by issuing appropriate directions under Article 256 and to direct the Registry not to list for hearing any application, appeals, petition etc., filed by Karnataka seeking relief from the court until and unless it complied with the September 3 and October 4 orders of the court.

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