Justice Aravind Kumar of Supreme Court recuses from hearing Cauvery river water sharing dispute

Supreme Court judge, Justice Aravind Kumar on Monday recused from hearing the dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over arrangements to share water in the Cauvery/ Kaveri river..Notably, Justice Kumar hails from Karnataka.The matter before the Court today was an application filed by the Karnataka government to refrain Tamil Nadu from executing the South Vellar project to divert surplus water of the Cauvery.Since Justice Kumar recused from hearing the case today, the bench which also comprised Justice PS Narasimha directed that the matter be placed before the Chief Justice so that it may be listed before an appropriate bench..Advocate VN Raghupathy appeared for the Karnataka government today. .The Karnataka-Tamil Nadu dispute over the water of the Cauvery river dates back to two agreements in 1892 and 1924 between the erstwhile Madras Presidency and the Princely State of Mysore.After several rounds of failed negotiations, the Supreme Court directed the constitution of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, which gave its award in 2007, allowing Tamil Nadu to draw a fixed amount of water every day.However, the dispute continued after both States filed petitions to review the decision.In 2016, Tamil Nadu again petitioned the Supreme Court as Karnataka submitted that it had no more water to share from its reservoir. Subsequently, the top court had asked the Central government to constitute a Cauvery Management Board (CMB).In February 2018, the Supreme Court observed that water bodies are national assets and that no one State could claim exclusive rights over them..Last year, a three-judge bench of the Court was called to decide on an application by the Tamil Nadu government to increase its current share of Cauvery river water from 5,000 to 7,200 cusecs (cubic feet per second) per day.In its plea, the Tamil Nadu government had claimed that Karnataka had "changed its stand", and had released a reduced quantum of 8,000 cusecs of water as against the 15,000 cusecs that was agreed upon earlier.In a counter-affidavit, the Karnataka government told the Supreme Court that the Tamil Nadu government's plea was misconceived since there was a distress condition prevailing due to the failure of the monsoons. Further, it claimed that Tamil Nadu had misused the carry-over storage of water by drawing 69.777 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) excessively.A three-judge bench of Justices BR Gavai, PS Narasimha and Prashant Kumar Mishra eventually opined that it was not inclined to interfere with the order passed on this aspect by the Cauvery Water Management Authority, particularly since the authority was monitoring the situation every fifteen days.Before this, the Supreme Court had indicated its disinclination to decide on how much Cauvery river water from Karnataka should be released to Tamil Nadu, without first examining the report of a designated expert body.Since then, the top court has been hearing various applications by concerned State governments in the matter..Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have another water-sharing dispute pending before the apex court concerning the Pennaiyar river. The Tamil Nadu government has filed an original suit in the matter against the Karnataka government and the Central government..Penniyar Water Dispute: Supreme Court Judges from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu recuse