The Inter-State River Water Disputes are one of the most contentious issues in the Indian federalism today. With increasing demand for water, inter-state river water disputes are on the rise but the present Inter State River Water Dispute Act, 1956 that provides the legal framework to address such disputes is seen to have many drawbacks. Cabinet recently approved Inter-State River Water disputes (Amendment) Bill, 2019. The Bill seeks to amend the Inter State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 with a view to streamline the adjudication of inter-state river water disputes and make the present institutional architecture robust.

Body:

Constitutional provisions related to interstate river water disputes:

• Entry 17 of State List deals with water i.e. water supply, irrigation, canal, drainage, embankments, water storage and water power.
• Entry 56 of Union List empowers the Union Government for the regulation and development of inter-state rivers and river valleys to the extent declared by Parliament to be expedient in the public interest.
• Article 262: In the case of disputes relating to waters, it provides
  • Clause 1: Parliament may by law provide for the adjudication of any dispute or complaint with respect to the use, distribution or control of the waters of, or in, any inter-State river or river valley.
  • Clause 2: Parliament may, by law provide that neither the Supreme Court nor any other court shall exercise jurisdiction in respect of any such dispute or complaint as mentioned above.
• Parliament has enacted two laws according to Article 262:
  • River Board Act, 1956
  • Inter-State Water Dispute Act, 1956

Reasons for delay in resolving river water disputes:

• The Inter State Water Dispute Act, 1956 which provides the legal framework to address such disputes suffers from many drawbacks as it does not fix any time limit for resolving river water disputes.
• Under this Act, a separate Tribunal has to be established for each Inter State River Water Dispute.
• Only three out of eight Tribunals have given awards accepted by the States, while Tribunals like Cauvery and Ravi Beas have been in existence for over 26 and 30 years respectively without any award.
• Delays are on account of no time limit for adjudication by a Tribunal, no upper age limit for the Chairman or the Members, work getting stalled due to occurrence of any vacancy and no time limit for publishing the report of the Tribunal.
• For instance, in the case of Godavari water dispute, the request was made in 1962, but the tribunal was constituted in 1968 and the award was given in 1979 which was published in the Gazette in 1980. The Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, constituted in 1990, gave its final award in 2007
• Opacity in the institutional framework and guidelines that define these proceedings; and ensuring compliance.
• The River Boards Act 1956, which is supposed to facilitate inter-state collaboration over water resource development, remained a ‘dead letter’ since its enactment.
• Though award is final and beyond the jurisdiction of Courts, either States can approach Supreme Court under Article 136 (Special Leave Petition) under Article 32 linking issue with the violation of Article 21 (Right to Life).
• The composition of the tribunal is not multidisciplinary and it consists of persons only from the judiciary.
• The absence of authoritative water data that is acceptable to all parties currently makes it difficult to even set up a baseline for adjudication.
• Surface water is controlled by Central Water Commission (CWC) and ground water by Central Ground Water Board of India (CGWB). Both bodies work independently and there is no common forum for common discussion with state governments on water management
• The growing nexus between water and politics have transformed the disputes into turfs of vote bank politics.
  • This politicisation has also led to increasing defiance by states, extended litigations and subversion of resolution mechanisms.
  • For example, the Punjab government played truant in the case of the Ravi-Beas tribunal.
• Too much discretion at too many stages of the process.
  • Partly because of procedural complexities involving multiple stakeholders across governments and agencies.
  • India’s complicated federal polity and its colonial legacy.

Way forward:

• The Centre’s proposal to set up a single, permanent tribunal to adjudicate on inter-state river water disputes could be a major step towards streamlining the dispute redressal mechanism.
• However, this alone will not be able to address the different kinds of problems—legal, administrative, constitutional and political—that plague the overall framework.
• Centre’s proposal to set up an agency alongside the tribunal, which will collect and process data on river waters, can be a right step in this direction.
• To strengthen the cooperative federalism, parochial mindset making regional issues superior to national issues should not be allowed.
• So disputes must be resolved by dialogue and talks and the political opportunism must be avoided.
• A robust and transparent institutional framework with cooperative approach is need of the hour.

Conclusion:

The bill is a step towards the cooperative federalism and will promote a prompt decision making in case of the various interstate water disputes. The solutions on water disputes will help in the socio economic development of stakeholder states. The implementation of the proposed steps in the bill in its true spirit will develop an integrated regime of river water utilisation.