Cauvery water dispute: Supreme Court likely to deliver final verdict this week

The Supreme Court is likely to pronounce the final verdict in Cauvery water dispute this week.

On January 9, the Apex Court indicated that it would deliver within a month its verdict on the decades-old Cauvery water dispute between riparian states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, saying enough confusion has been created on it for over two decades.

A three-judge bench of the apex court had reserved its verdict on the appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala against the 2007 award of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (CWDT) on sharing of water, after marathon hearing on September 20, 2017.

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"Enough of confusion has been there for past two decades. Any forum can touch the matter after the verdict is delivered in the issue. We will give the verdict in four weeks," a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud had said on January 9.

The court's remark had come during the hearing of a plea filed in 2016 by a citizens' group led by philanthropist Kiran Mazumdar Shaw seeking its intervention for the supply of drinking water to residents of Bengaluru and surrounding districts.

The group under the banner of Bangalore Political Action Committee (BPAC) in which Shaw is the President and former Infosys director and educationist Mohandas Pai the Vice President, had told the court that citizens of Bengaluru need adequate drinking water and their right to life needed to be protected by the top court.

In Karnataka, the verdict is being watched very closely as the polls are round the corner. An unfavourable verdict would put the Congress in Karnataka in a spot of bother as it relies heavily on the votes in the Cauvery belt.

(With inputs from PTI)