New Delhi: In a sudden U-turn, the Centre on Monday moved the Supreme Court seeking recall of the order passed on September 30 directing the setting up of the Cauvery Management Board on or before October 4 to assess the ground realities in the Cauvery river basin.
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi made an urgent mention before a Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Uday Lalit that the order was passed because of his “mistake” as there is an embargo on the Supreme Court from passing orders to form a Cauvery management board under Article 262 of the Constitution, read with Section 11 of the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956.
Quoting Article 262 he said the Supreme Court cannot entertain any matter pertaining to an inter-State river dispute once a tribunal set up under parliamentary legislation has passed its final order.
He also contended that the constitution of a CMB by the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal was only a “recommendation”, which the Centre could choose to either accept or reject. Justice Misra told the AG “But you complied with our orders to form a Cauvery Supervisory Committee, you consented then. You also consented on Friday to our order.”
Intense speculation has been doing the rounds that Union ministers Sadananda Gowda and Ananth Kumar, who hail from Karnataka, played a major role in the Centre’s decision and they also “pushed” Mr Gowda and other leaders to impress upon the government that the constitution of CMB would be a wrong decision.
The U-turn of the Union government goes completely against the opinion being voiced by officials of the Union Water Resources Ministry and Central Water Commission who have been batting for such a mechanism to sort out the century-plus old inter-state water issue.
In fact, CWC chairman G.S. Jha had on September 21 openly batted for constitution of the CMB to resolve water issues between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
“The AG had told the Supreme Court that the Government would comply with the orders and even before that, the Ministry of Water Resources had begun work on setting up of the board. But everything changed overnight and now the Centre has officially opposed the CMB. We have no clue of how it happened,” sources in the Ministry and Commission told Deccan Chronicle.
Union Water Resources Secretary Shashi Shekhar had told this correspondent on September 29 that work was apace on the constitution of CMB. “We are in the process (of setting up the CMB). Any decision-making has a procedure and the procedure will have to be followed. We have begun the process. I can only say this much at this juncture,” he had said.
Karnataka, which is currently being ruled by the Congress, goes to the polls in April-May 2018 and the BJP has been under tremendous pressure from the state unit and its leaders to speak up against CMB.
