Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday requested his intervention for immediate issuance of a notification for constituting a tribunal for an early initiation of the process of adjudication of the Mahanadi water dispute between Odisha and Chhattisgarh.
Patnaik stated that as per the Inter-State River Water Disputes (ISRWD) Act, 1956, if the Central Government is of the opinion that the water dispute cannot be settled by negotiations, the Centre shall, within a period not exceeding one year from the date of receipt of such a request by notification in the Official Gazette, constitute a water disputes tribunal for adjudication of the water dispute."
Therefore, the Central Government is supposed to constitute the tribunal before November 19, 2017 as his Government had filed the statutory complaint on November 19, 2016, the Chief Minister said.
He further stated that in his letter November 7, 2017, it was also brought to the PM’s kind notice that the Additional Solicitor General appearing for the Union of India in original suit No 1 of 2017 (filed by the State of Odisha) had appraised the Supreme Court on May 2, 2017 that the Union Ministry of Water Resources has prepared a note for a decision of the Cabinet on constitution of a tribunal.
The same submission was made by the Union Government on the last date of hearing of the said suit held on October 9, 2017 before the Supreme Court of India.
“I would like to emphasise here that the timeline of one year for constitution of the Tribunal for adjudicating the Mahanadi water dispute under Section 4(1) of the ISRWD Act, 1956 is getting over on November 18, 2017. However, the Union Government has not yet constituted the Tribunal despite my repeated requests over last one year,” stated Patnaik.