Hearing a plea by the Delhi government highlighting water woes in the national capital, the Supreme Court on Monday called for an emergency meeting of the Upper Yamuna River Board to be held to deal with the issue on June 5. The vacation bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and KV Viswanathan posted the plea of the Delhi government seeking additional water from neighbouring Haryana for a hearing on June 6 and sought minutes of the meeting and suggestions on the steps taken. Initially, the bench sought to know why there couldn’t be a meeting of all stakeholders to address the issue. “Why can’t there be a joint meeting of all the stakeholders?” a vacation bench of Justices P K Mishra and K V Viswanathan asked at the outset.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre and the Haryana government, said the issue was already being considered by the UYRB where all stakeholder states including Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi are parties.”This is the question which is being considered. Himachal Pradesh is called upon by the board to provide the details as to what is the extra water or additional water if at all they have,” he said.
The UYRB was set up in 1995 with one of its main functions being to regulate the allocation of available flows The bench observed that as an emergency measure, the meeting of the board may be convened tomorrow to address the issue.
It noted that the advocates appearing for the Centre and the governments of Delhi, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh have agreed that a meeting of the UYRB be held.
The bench was hearing a plea filed by the Delhi government seeking a direction to Haryana to release the surplus water provided by Himachal Pradesh to the national capital to mitigate its water crisis. amongst the beneficiary states and also monitor and review the progress of all projects up to and including Okhla barrage in Delhi. The states include Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.
“In the course of hearing, all the parties agreed that there should be a non-adversarial approach to the problem of scarcity of water faced by the citizens of Delhi,” the bench said.
It said the lawyers have “agreed that there shall be an emergent meeting of the Upper Yamuna River Board on June 5 to address the issues agitated in this petition and all other connected issues in right earnest so that the problem of scarcity of water for the citizens of Delhi shall be properly addressed”. The bench said the matter be posted for hearing on June 6 along with the minutes of the meeting of the board and the suggested steps to be taken by the stakeholders to solve the problem.
Mehta said as per the figures placed before the board, if 100 litres of water comes to Delhi, the residents get only 48.65 litres.”Total water loss is 51.35 per cent,” he said, adding that though the residents don’t misutilise water, there are leakages, tanker mafia and theft by some industrial units.
Mehta said the Delhi government will have to tighten up the strings.“You will make that point but not release water in June,” senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for Delhi government, said.
Singhvi said the Delhi government was making plans for preventing wastage of water.”What solicitor is saying is also correct that there should be no wastage of water,” the bench observed.
When the bench said the board’s meeting can be convened on Tuesday, Mehta responded tomorrow it may be difficult.
“Tomorrow, there will be too much of heat,” the bench observed. The counting of votes polled in the Lok Sabha elections is scheduled for tomorrow.
“As far as Himachal Pradesh is concerned, whatever unutilised water we have, we are ready to provide,” the counsel appearing for Himachal Pradesh told the bench.
During the hearing, Singhvi said, “I come from Rajasthan. The highest I have seen in Rajasthan is 50 (degrees Celsius). I never heard of 52 (degrees Celsius) in Delhi. I have been in Delhi for a long time.”
