By February 2023 India Had Set Up Nine River Water Tribunals Under Article 262 and a 1956 Act, and Five Had Finished Their Work and Been Dissolved

Article 262 of the Constitution lets Parliament send a dispute over the water of an inter-State river to a tribunal and, if it chooses, keep every court out of the matter. Parliament passed the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act in 1956, and on 9 February 2023 the Ministry of Jal Shakti told the Lok Sabha that nine tribunals had been constituted under it, five of which had decided their disputes and been dissolved.

Several of them finished the job. The Krishna award came in May 1976, the Narmada in December 1979 and the Godavari in July 1980, and the Ministry’s reply of 17 July 2014 calls the sharing disputes on all three rivers settled by publication of those decisions. The Cauvery award of 5 February 2007 was modified by the Supreme Court in 2018 and is now carried out by an authority set up under the Act.

A river that belongs to two lists

Water is entry 17 of the State List, which covers water supplies, irrigation, canals, drainage, embankments, storage and water power. The entry is “subject to the provisions of entry 56 of List I”, and entry 56 of the Union List lets Parliament take over the regulation and development of inter-State rivers and river valleys to the extent it declares by law that Union control is expedient in the public interest. Our guide to the three lists of the Seventh Schedule covers the division.

A dispute between states also has a court route. Article 131 gives the Supreme Court original jurisdiction, meaning the case begins there, in disputes between states (our piece on the routes to the Supreme Court covers it). Article 262 adds a second path in two clauses. Clause (1) says Parliament may by law provide for the adjudication of any dispute or complaint about the use, distribution or control of the waters of an inter-State river or river valley. Clause (2) says that, despite anything else in the Constitution, Parliament may provide that neither the Supreme Court nor any other court shall exercise jurisdiction over such a dispute. Article 263 separately lets the President set up an inter-State council to advise on disputes between states, covered in our piece on the Inter-State Council.

The article was not in the 1948 Draft Constitution. The Constitution of India archive records that the Drafting Committee’s chairman proposed it as draft Article 242A, a permanent mechanism in place of a commission the President would have appointed for each dispute, and that the Constituent Assembly adopted it on 9 September 1949. Most of the Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950 under Article 394, but Article 262 did nothing until Parliament passed a law under it.

How the 1956 Act moves a complaint to an award

The Act turns Article 262 into steps. Under section 3, a state government that believes another state’s law, action or failure to act has harmed, or is likely to harm, its interests or its people’s in an inter-State river can ask the Centre to refer the dispute to a tribunal. Section 4 says that if the Centre thinks negotiation cannot settle the dispute, it must constitute a Water Disputes Tribunal within one year of the request. The tribunal has a chairman and two members, nominated by the Chief Justice of India from sitting judges of the Supreme Court or a High Court, and the Centre may appoint assessors, who are technical advisers, to help it.

Under section 5 the tribunal investigates and sends the Centre a report of the facts it found and its decision, within three years, which the Centre can extend by up to two. Within three months of the decision, the Centre or any state can ask the tribunal to explain a point. The tribunal then has a year for a further report, and the decision is deemed modified accordingly.

Section 6 requires the Centre to publish the decision in the Official Gazette, the government’s legal notice. From publication it is final, binds the parties and has the same force as an order or decree of the Supreme Court. Section 6A lets the Centre frame a scheme, including an authority, to carry the decision out. Section 11 is where Parliament used the power in Article 262(2): neither the Supreme Court nor any other court may take up a water dispute that can be referred to a tribunal.

The deadlines came later. The Lok Sabha’s Standing Committee on Water Resources recorded in August 2017 that, on the Sarkaria Commission’s recommendations, the Act was amended to set time limits for setting up tribunals and for their awards, in force from 6 August 2002.

What the nine tribunals have produced

Dates are from the Ministry’s replies to Parliament of 17 July 2014 and 20 December 2018.

The Ministry told the Standing Committee on 16 June 2017 that the Godavari tribunal took 11 years 3 months, the Krishna I 7 years 1 month and the Narmada 10 years 2 months. The Cauvery tribunal took more than 16 years. The Ministry’s 2014 reply adds that project-specific disputes inside the Godavari, Krishna and Narmada basins still reach the Centre and the Supreme Court.

The Cauvery case, from award to authority

The Cauvery award, as the Ministry’s release of 14 March 2013 sets it out, shared 726 TMC (a TMC is a thousand million cubic feet) among the four parties: 30 TMC to Kerala, 270 to Karnataka, 419 to Tamil Nadu and 7 to Puducherry. Another 10 TMC was reserved for environmental protection and 4 for water that escapes to the sea, making 740 TMC. Down To Earth reports that 192 TMC of Tamil Nadu’s 419 was to be released by Karnataka and the other 227 TMC arises in Tamil Nadu’s own catchment. The Centre published the award in the Gazette on 19 February 2013, and the states had appealed to the Supreme Court in the meantime.

On 16 February 2018 a three-judge bench partly allowed Karnataka’s appeal. LiveLaw’s report of the hearing records the positions. Karnataka told the Court that the 1924 agreement between the Madras province and the princely state of Mysore could not be the basis for sharing between the present states. Tamil Nadu argued that the tribunal had allocated water on the basis of one crop when two are grown in the state.

SANDRP, quoting the judgment, reports what the Court found. The 1892 and 1924 agreements were neither inoperative nor extinct, but the 1924 agreement had a fixed term of 50 years and expired in 1974. The tribunal had left out about 20 TMC of groundwater under Tamil Nadu, and the Court counted 10 TMC of it. The tribunal had cut Karnataka’s domestic and industrial share on the footing that only a third of Bengaluru lies in the basin and half its drinking water would come from groundwater. The Court called that view unsustainable and added 4.75 TMC, so Karnataka gained 14.75 TMC in all. Down To Earth gives the resulting shares as 284.75 TMC for Karnataka and 404.25 TMC for Tamil Nadu, with Kerala and Puducherry unchanged, and Karnataka’s release at the border falling from 192 to 177.25 TMC. The Court described the waters of an inter-State river as “a national asset”, with no single state able to claim them as its own, endorsed the tribunal’s monthly release pattern for 15 years and told the Centre to frame a scheme within six weeks.

On 31 March 2018 Tamil Nadu filed a contempt petition over the missing scheme, and the Centre applied to the Court the same day for clarification, because the states disagreed on the body to create. On 18 May 2018 the Court disposed of both, finding the corrected draft scheme in line with the award as modified and with section 6A. The Centre notified the Cauvery Water Management Scheme on 1 June 2018, creating the Cauvery Water Management Authority and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee, and dissolved the tribunal by a notification of 16 July 2018.

The draft the Court approved sets the Authority’s yearly routine. On 1 June it totals the storage in the main reservoirs and assumes a “50% dependable year” with a yield of 740 TMC, works out each state’s share on that basis and orders releases in ten-day intervals. In a shortfall the states share the distress in line with their allotted shares, and Karnataka’s release is regulated at the Biligundulu gauge on the border.

What a state may do after a ruling goes against it

The Ravi and Beas dispute tested that question. The Punjab Settlement of 24 July 1985 led to a new section 14 in the 1956 Act and a Ravi and Beas tribunal, constituted in April 1986. An agreement of 31 December 1981 among Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan had already reallocated the shares and provided for the Satluj-Yamuna Link canal. Haryana sued Punjab in the Supreme Court under Article 131, and on 15 January 2002 the Court decreed that Punjab complete its stretch of the canal within a year. Punjab’s own suit for release from that duty was dismissed on 4 June 2004.

On 12 July 2004 Punjab passed the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, ending the 1981 agreement and all other Ravi and Beas agreements. Ten days later the President referred four questions on it to the Supreme Court under Article 143(1), which lets the President ask for the Court’s advisory opinion.

The opinion records both sides. Punjab’s counsel argued that the reference was not maintainable, that circumstances had changed since the decree and the flow of water had fallen, that the dispute should go to the section 14 tribunal, and that allocations should be reviewed as flows change. Haryana’s counsel argued that a state cannot by law cancel a decree against it, and that a state wanting a revision should approach the tribunal.

A five-judge bench gave its opinion on 10 November 2016 and wrote that “all the questions referred to this Court are answered in the negative”. It noted that Punjab had used legislation instead of approaching the tribunal, and it quoted the Court’s 2014 judgment in State of Tamil Nadu v. State of Kerala. That passage says a legislature cannot decide a dispute between states by law, because Articles 131 and 262 provide for independent adjudication, and that a unilateral law overturning a final judgment infringes the separation of powers. The Ministry told Parliament’s committee in 2017 that the tribunal’s further report on the states’ clarification requests was still to be given.

Krishna, Mahadayi and Mahanadi

The second Krishna tribunal reported on 30 December 2010. Undivided Andhra Pradesh challenged the decision in the Supreme Court, and on 16 September 2011 the Court directed that, until further orders, the decision on the references made by the three states and the Centre should not be published in the Gazette. The further report of 29 November 2013 could not be notified because of that direction. The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, which created Telangana, added terms of reference under its section 89, and the tribunal’s term has been extended each year to address them. The Ministry’s reply adds that the award may be revised at the states’ request, as past tribunals have advocated reviewing allocations after a set time.

The Mahadayi tribunal submitted its report and decision on 14 August 2018, and Goa applied under section 5(3) for explanation on 20 August 2018. Odisha’s section 3 complaint of 19 November 2016 led the Centre to constitute the Mahanadi tribunal, for Odisha and Chhattisgarh, on 12 March 2018.

A standing tribunal that passed the Lok Sabha and lapsed

Parliament has also looked at replacing one tribunal per dispute. A bill introduced on 14 March 2017 proposed a standing tribunal. The Standing Committee reported on 10 August 2017 that its limits added up to six years, a year and a half for a disputes resolution committee and four and a half for the tribunal, and recommended two years at most for adjudication. The Ministry told the Committee that Punjab’s proposal to replace “party States” with “riparian States” could cast doubt on Rajasthan’s claims under the Ravi and Beas award, since Rajasthan is not strictly a riparian state.

The Cabinet approved a 2019 bill on 10 July 2019, and it was introduced on 25 July and passed by the Lok Sabha on 31 July 2019. PRS Legislative Research summarises it: a disputes resolution committee to negotiate for a year, extendable by six months; a single tribunal with benches, replacing all existing tribunals; a decision in two years, extendable by one; and a duty on the Centre to frame a scheme. The bill never passed the Rajya Sabha. A Rajya Sabha bulletin said it lapsed under Article 107(5) when the 17th Lok Sabha was dissolved, PTI reported on 14 June 2024.

The 1956 Act’s tribunals carry on. On 21 August 2025 the Lok Sabha was told that the Krishna tribunal’s term had been extended by one year from 1 August 2025, by Gazette notification 3221(E) of 10 July 2025.