Cauvery panel submits report to SC, makes no mention of water to be released to Tamil Nadu

New Delhi: The Cauvery Supervisory Committee (CSC), which visited the Cauvery basin area of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for assessing the ground situation, on Monday submitted its report to the Supreme Court. [caption id=“attachment_3057212” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. CNN-News18[/caption] The committee, however, did not make any recommendations with regard to the quantum of water to be released to Tamil Nadu by Karnataka. “The report only gives an assessment of the ground situation without making any recommendation about the release of water to Tamil Nadu,” said a lawyer dealing with the case on behalf of Tamil Nadu. The committee – comprising Central Water Commission (CWC) Chairman GS Jha, CWC member S Masood Hussain, and Krishna and Godavari Basin Organisation Chief Engineer RK Gupta – visited the Cauvery basin area of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu on the 4 October direction of the apex court. The three-member team headed by Jha was also accompanied by one representative each of the four riparian states – Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry. The report will come up for hearing on Tuesday before the bench of Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Amitava Roy and Justice AM Khanwilkar. The Supreme Court, by its 4 October order, asked Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu every day for 12 days from 7 to 18 October, and asked the Cauvery Supervisory Committee to visit the Cauvery basin area of the two states for an assessment of the ground situation and report back to it by 17 October. Upon reaching Bengaluru on 7 October, the CSC said it favoured judicious sharing of the scarce water resource between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu following deficit monsoon rains this year. “Our aim is to ensure judicious distribution of the river water between the two states,” Jha said during his two-day visit to Cauvery basin areas of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. He told the media persons in Bengaluru that “we will submit a report to the Supreme Court with data on the live storage levels, inflows and outflows of water in the reservoirs in both the states for a fair distribution”.