Examine the constitutional and legal provisions governing inter-state river water disputes in India, with reference to the Cauvery dispute.

Water is a State subject (Entry 17, State List), but regulation of inter-state rivers falls to the Union (Entry 56, Union List). Article 262 bridges the two, and the Cauvery dispute shows this framework adjudicates competently yet enforces weakly.

Constitutional provisions

• Article 262(1): Parliament may by law provide for adjudication of disputes over use, distribution or control of inter-state river waters [1].
• Article 262(2): Parliament may bar the Supreme Court and all other courts from such disputes — a deliberate shift from judicial to tribunal-based settlement [1].

Statutory framework

• The Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956, enacted under Article 262, empowers the Centre to constitute a Tribunal on a State's request; its award is published in the Gazette and is binding on the parties [2]. The Act has been amended four times, last in 2002 [1].
• Cauvery application: the CWDT (constituted 1990) gave its award in 2007; on appeals, the Supreme Court on 16 February 2018 modified it, raising Karnataka's share by 14.75 TMC and reducing Tamil Nadu's correspondingly [3].
• Using the Act's scheme-making power, the Centre notified the Cauvery Water Management Scheme on 1 June 2018, creating the CWMA and CWRC [3]. CWMA handles storage, apportionment and regulation of releases at the inter-state contact point, with part-time members from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry [4].

Working and limitations

• The mechanism operates continuously: in September 2026 CWMA upheld a CWRC direction for 6,000 cusecs/day for 15 days at Biligundlu, which Karnataka termed "illogical" citing drought and threatened to appeal [5].
• Gaps: the Article 262(2) bar coexists with routine recourse to the Supreme Court; awards take decades; no independent enforcement machinery exists, so compliance rests on political goodwill; and fixed-quantum formulas ignore rainfall variability.

Thus, adjudication is settled but implementation remains contested. The proposed single permanent tribunal with a Disputes Resolution Committee [6], coupled with basin-level, climate-sensitive sharing and real-time telemetry, can convert a litigative framework into cooperative federalism in the spirit of Article 262.