the goan I network
PANAJI
Goa’s crucial interim application seeking a restraining order against Karnataka and Maharashtra going ahead with steps to implement the recently notified final award of the Mhadei Water Disputes Tribunal will be taken up by the Supreme Court of India on Monday.
The plea by Goa also seeks a directive from the Apex Court to hold a joint inspection of the site at Kalasa where Karnataka is building a dam to divert water from the Mhadei basin into its water-deficient Malaprabha river to purportedly feed a drinking water project for the Hubli-Dharwad areas.
Goa has for over a decade been accusing Karnataka of clandestinely going ahead with the construction work on the dam despite first having given a written undertaking to the Supreme Court that it will not carry out any work, and later, the Mhadei Water Disputes Tribunal ordering sealing of the underground channels build there with brick walls.
Success in the Apex Court on Monday will be crucial to Goa’s challenge of the water-sharing award in so far as it has permitted Karnataka to divert 3.9 TMC of water from the Mhadei basin to the Malaprabha river.
Goa’s legal team is of the view that failure to get a favourable outcome could jeopardize its challenge of the award per-se and also defeat the purpose of preventing diversion of water outside the Mhadei basin which could potentially cause massive damage to the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats which the river feeds.
Through the eight-year-long adjudication proceedings of the dispute before the Mahadayi Water Dispute tribunal, none of the State governments opposed any demand for use of Mhadei’s waters within the basin, either for consumption or for any other purpose.
What however, is unacceptable to Goa, because of the expected ecological devastation it is expected to cause, is the diversion outside the basin, even if the Tribunal has permitted Karnataka only 3.9 TMC of the 7-odd TMC it had laid claim to divert into its water-deficient Malaprabha river for the Hubli-Dharwad drinking water project.
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and the State government’s legal team led by Advocate General Devidas Pangam see no reason why its efforts in the Apex court will not succeed on Monday but are admittedly conscious of the fact that failure could also severely dent its chances in the very challenge of the just notified water-sharing award in as far as
Karnataka being permitted to divert 3.9 TMC of water through the Kalsa-Bhandura dam project.
