Weeks after the Supreme Court pulled up the Centre for not framing a scheme for the Cauvery Management Board by the stipulated March 29 deadline, the BJP led government has asked for another extension.
On April 9, a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra had ordered the Centre to frame the scheme as per its February 16 judgment in the Cauvery dispute. The court had categorically said that the Centre, by drafting the scheme by May 3, should prove its bonafide intention to resolve the 200-year-old inter-State water dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Reacting to this development of the centre asking for a two-week extension to form the scheme, AIADMK leader O S Manian told the media, “The Centre clearly doesn’t want to form the CMB till the Karnataka elections are held. This delay is unnecessary. We have to see how the Supreme Court responds to this.”
“You are bound by our decree… you are obliged to frame the scheme. We are surprised that it was not done… We have delivered the judgment after much study and difficulty… yet you did not show the resolve to frame the scheme,” Chief Justice Dipak Misra had addressed Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal, for the Centre.
To this, Tamil Nadu replied that anyone who understands elementary English understood what the Cauvery verdict said, but the Centre did not. Tamil Nadu has accused the Centre of not “protecting the interests of the farmers and the larger interests of the State”.
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