If the history of river-water disputes among Indian states offers any lesson, it is that even a long, meandering process may not arrive at a lasting solution. Afloat on the latest turn of such a disagreement is the Andhra Pradesh government’s proposed Polavaram-Nallamala Sagar Link Project, which seeks to divert 200 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) of Godavari water to the drought-prone Rayalaseema region.
AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s logic appears reasonable—on average, around 3,000 TMC of Godavari water is estimated to flow unused into the Bay of Bengal every year. But Telangana, whose writ challenging the project’s expansion was disposed of by the Supreme Court on Monday, contends that the project violates the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act and points out that the appointed tribunal had allowed only 80 TMC to be diverted, not 200. The state may file a fresh suit under Article 131 of the Constitution. Telangana uses about 433 TMC of Godavari water, while Andhra Pradesh uses roughly 739 TMC.
At the core of the dispute lies a more fundamental problem: the absence of a final and binding determination of each state’s share in the Krishna and Godavari waters after the creation of Telangana. As long as this ambiguity persists, individual projects are bound to trigger legal and political confrontations. A limited silver lining is the stated willingness of the two chief ministers—Naidu and Telangana’s A Revanth Reddy—to pursue a give-and-take approach. But such an approach rarely works in river-water disputes.
Last year, Odisha and Chhattisgarh agreed to an ‘amicable’ solution to share Mahanadi waters, but structures planned upstream by the upper riparian state have put a question mark over any agreement anytime soon, even though both states are ruled by the BJP.
Several states have been embroiled in complex disputes over sharing river waters for years. Tribunals have provided limited relief, with their awards often challenged in the Supreme Court. For the sibling states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, even the Apex Council has failed to mediate a lasting settlement. The Mahanadi Water Disputes Tribunal has made little progress even eight years after being constituted. The idea of a single water tribunal to address all disputes is unlikely to find many takers. Given such an impasse, the Centre and the states must sit together to evolve a constitutional mechanism for the speedy resolution of river-water disputes.