Image used for representational purposes
| Photo Credit: E. Lakshmi Narayanan
With this month’s Cauvery realisation touching around 76 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft), Tamil Nadu is on the verge of receiving its annual share of the river water: 177.25 tmc ft.
As of August 27, 2024, the State received approximately 174 tmc ft – 174.36 tmc ft, to be precise – since June 1, 2024, the commencement of the current water year. Though the daily inflow has gone down in recent days, it is only a matter of time that the entire quota for the year will be realised.
In June and July, the figures of realisation were 2.25 tmc ft and 96.54 tmc ft, respectively.
It was in August 2022 that Biligundulu, the reference point on the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border for the measurement of the receipts, saw the highest realisation – 223.6 tmc ft – for the month in question since 1974 (when the inter-State agreement, as per the 2018 judgment of the Supreme Court, had expired).
A perusal of the data of realisation for August since 1974 would reveal that the average figure for the 50-year-long period (1974-2023) was 62 tmc ft. However, if the period is split into different sub-periods, the wide fluctuation in the average figures is evident.
To cite a few examples, between 1974 and 1990 (which marked the period of negotiations among the riparian States), the average was 71 tmc ft. It was down to around 50 tmc ft for the period between 1991 and 2012, when the interim order of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal was in force. The Tribunal’s stipulation for the month was 54.72 tmc ft. The average further dwindled to 39 tmc ft for the years from 2013 to 2017 when the unmodified version of the Tribunal’s final award was in place, with the prescribed quantity for August being 50 tmc ft.
However, the average rose steeply to 98.75 tmc ft between 2018 – when the Supreme Court partially modified the final award – and 2023, essentially because of two exceptional years: 2018 and 2022.
Six years ago, the realisation in August was 176.5 tmc ft and two years ago, it was 223.6 tmc ft. After the Court’s modification of the final award, the quantity for August has been fixed at 45.95 tmc ft.
