The Centre on Thursday informed the Supreme Court that the meeting of the Cauvery River Authority (CRA) was likely to be convened shortly as requested by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister to discuss the distress-sharing formula.
In response to the Tamil Nadu’s application, the Centre, in its affidavit, said as per the Cauvery River Authority (Conduct of Business) Rules, 1998 the quorum of the meeting should be three members in addition to the Chairperson. Hence, a request had been sent to the member States of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry for their concurrence for holding the CRA meeting, it said.
On the grievance of Tamil Nadu that Karnataka had not released adequate quantity of water, the Centre said “as per the interim order of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal dated June 25, 1991 the cumulative inflow at Mettur up to August 22 is required to be 91.75 tmcft for the water year 2012-2013; whereas the cumulative inflow as reported by the Public Works department of Tamil nadu is 05.81 tmcft. Therefore, considerable deficit of 85.95 tmcft is noticed.” It said as per the decision of the 24 meeting of Cauvery Monitoring Committee, on December 4, 2009, “the distress-sharing formula as approved by the committee headed by the Commissioner (Projects), MoWR with the representatives from the States along with the stand of Karnataka government that there could not be a rigid formula, is required to the referred to the CRA for its consideration when noticeable distress condition occurs in future.”
Accordingly, the Centre said the concurrence of the States concerned had been sought.
The case comes up for further hearing on September 3.
