Inter-state river water disputes are often a legacy of state reorganisation. Discuss with examples.

River waters are allocated to political units, but reorganisation redraws those units without redrawing the allocations. Article 262 and Entry 56 of the Union List give Parliament the dispute-resolution mandate, yet the sharpest conflicts arise precisely where a bifurcated state's pre-existing share is left undivided — making reorganisation a major, though not the sole, source of such disputes.

Why reorganisation seeds disputes

• Inherited undivided shares: awards made for a parent state must be re-apportioned between successors, reopening settled arithmetic.
• Split of headworks and command areas: dams often fall in one successor state while canals irrigate the other, as with the Indrapuri Reservoir and Masanjore Dam [2].
• Asset-liability division: water infrastructure is bundled with wider PSU and asset disputes pending since bifurcation [2].

Illustrative examples

• Sone River (Bihar–Jharkhand): the Bansagar Agreement, 1973 apportioned 14.25 MAF — Madhya Pradesh 5.25, Uttar Pradesh 1.25, undivided Bihar 7.75 MAF [3]. Jharkhand's creation in 2000 left this 7.75 MAF contested for about 26 years, until an MoU was signed between the two states in the presence of the Union Home Minister [1].
• Krishna (Andhra Pradesh–Telangana): under Section 89 of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal-II's tenure was extended and fresh Terms of Reference issued in 2023 to adjudicate between the successor states [4].
• Comparable frictions over Ravi-Beas followed the 1966 Punjab reorganisation.

Beyond reorganisation Disputes also stem from riparian geography and demand growth — Cauvery and Mahadayi involve no bifurcation.

Reorganisation thus converts an internal allocation into an inter-state claim, and disputes persist where succession is legislated without hydrological settlement. The Sone MoU shows that negotiated, Centre-facilitated settlements through Zonal Councils can resolve what tribunals litigate for decades. Embedding water re-apportionment within reorganisation Acts themselves, and strengthening cooperative federalism forums, would secure irrigation and drinking water while advancing SDG-6.