TN receives only 50 pc of stipulated quantum
At the 91st meeting of the CRWC held on Tuesday, the TN officials demanded 3,800 cusecs of water daily from Biligundlu for 43 days from December 20 to compensate for the shortfall.
Representative image.
CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu has been facing a deficit of more than 50 per cent of the stipulated flow of water from the Cauvery River, which is the lifeline of the Delta districts, since June this year.
Though the State government flagged the issue to the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC) repeatedly, it served no purpose as the upper riparian State preferred to ignore the direction of the authority and realised a meagre quantity of water from the inter-state contact point Biligundlu.
The Karnataka government, going by the Supreme Court’s February 2018 verdict, should release 161.408 tmc of water. However, it cited poor rainfall and discharged only 72.499 tmc of water between June 1 and December 18, leaving the lower riparian state with a shortfall of 88.909 tmc.
The neighbouring state, according to State water resource department officials, had also failed to honour CWRC’s recommendations and CWRA’s directions in releasing Cauvery water as per the distress formula.
“There was a shortfall of 7.610 tmc of water between July 31 and November 23 as per the CWRA’s direction to release water to TN based on the distress formula,” said an official and pointed out Karnataka should release 10.565 tmc of water from November 24 to December 31.
However, it discharged just little over 2 tmc of water (27,147 cusecs) till December 19. It should release around 8 tmc of water in the remaining 12 days. The neighbouring state discharged 1872 cusecs and gradually receded the quantity of water up to 824 cusecs during the period.
At the 91st meeting of the CRWC held on Tuesday, the TN officials demanded 3,800 cusecs of water daily from Biligundlu for 43 days from December 20 to compensate for the shortfall.
However, the TN’s counterpart vehemently opposed it and reiterated that they were not in a position to discharge water as the live storage level of the four reservoirs was 42.546 tmc, accounting for just 40.69 per cent of the full storage capacity of 104.551 tmc.
The CWRC recommends ensuring realisation of stipulated quantities of flow of Cauvery water at the inter-state contact point Biligundlu, as per the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal final verdict, from December 24 to January 31 next year, there is little hope of getting 6.26 tmc of water for the period, said the TN officials.
