Karnataka will take the 6,000-cusec Cauvery order to the Supreme Court

Karnataka will petition the Supreme Court against the latest Cauvery release order, Water Resources Minister N. Chaluvarayaswamy said on 9 September. The Cauvery Water Management Authority, meeting for the 57th time in Delhi under S. K. Haldar, upheld a Cauvery Water Regulation Committee recommendation that the state keep 6,000 cusecs flowing to Tamil Nadu for 15 days from 8 a.m. on 9 September. Officials from both states were in the room. Karnataka's appeal at the same table was rejected.

The volume over 15 days is about 7.8 thousand million cubic feet. An earlier CWRC instruction, issued after its 141st meeting on 24 August and confirmed by the Authority on 25 August, had set the rate at 9,000 cusecs for 15 days, or about 11.66 tmc at the Biligundulu border gauge. Tamil Nadu had asked for 17,000 cusecs. Karnataka had asked for the figure to be cut to 2,000, citing falling inflows and drinking-water reserve. The committee landed in the middle and called it a modification. Bengaluru calls it impossible.

Chaluvarayaswamy said he had spoken at length with Chief Minister D. K. Shivakumar and that a petition would be filed on 10 September after lawyers finished the draft. The government has also told officials to seek a review at the CWRC. He said reservoir levels were very critical, that priority had to stay on drinking water, and that dry lakes and tanks still needed to be filled. More than 125 taluks are listed as facing severe drought. He said the picture might ease if rain arrived within a week of the Gowri-Ganesha festival. He also said the state would consider hiring a special advocate, a step former chief minister Basavaraj Bommai had urged.

What the gauges show, and what they do not

The CWRC reviewed rainfall, reservoir storage and crop conditions before it cut the rate from 9,000 to 6,000. Inflows into the four major Karnataka reservoirs in the basin have dropped over the past week, the minister said. Nearly half the water now held is earmarked for drinking supply. Those are the facts Karnataka put on the table. Tamil Nadu's fact is the cropping calendar in the delta and the Supreme Court's older sharing formula, which the Authority exists to administer.

The immediate legal hook is a Supreme Court direction, a day before the Delhi meeting, that Tamil Nadu take its grievance about proportionate shares to the CWMA rather than sit on it. The Authority then met and kept a release in force. That sequence lets Karnataka argue that the distress year is not being read on the ground. It lets Tamil Nadu argue that the statutory body has spoken and that a state cannot write its own number.

Chaluvarayaswamy called the CWRC order absurd after the Monday session and said officials had argued the basin numbers hard. He also said benches sitting in Delhi do not feel a drinking-water queue. That sentence will travel in Karnataka. It will not, by itself, stay a 6,000-cusec instruction that has already started.

Fifteen days, then another meeting

Release orders in this dispute come in fortnights because the inflows change. A 6,000-cusec clip can be raised, cut or repeated when the 15 days end. If the Supreme Court takes the matter on the week Karnataka files, the practical question will be whether the flow at Biligundulu is stayed, trimmed or left to run while notices go out. If the Court does not intervene quickly, Tamil Nadu will have received most of the 7.8 tmc before a longer hearing begins.

The deeper fight is unchanged. Karnataka stores the southwest monsoon in the upper basin. Tamil Nadu plants on the release. In a short monsoon the two calendars cannot both be satisfied at the numbers each government treats as minimum. The Authority's job is to pick a figure anyway. This week the figure is 6,000 cusecs. Bengaluru's next move is a petition. The river will not wait for the listing.