Need : More than an Judgement
-------------------------------------
Times of India ( 17 Feb ) carries following news :
“ Rivers national assets,
no single state can seek rights over them, says SC “
The Supreme Court on Friday said waters of
inter-state rivers were national assets and no single state could seek full
rights over it, extinguishing origin states’ claim of exclusive rights over the
waters of an inter-state river. “ (Rivers) Being in a state of flow, no state
can claim exclusive ownership of such waters or assert a prescriptive right so
as to deprive other states of their equitable share,” said a three-judge bench
headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra.
The CJI narrated the gradual shift of the
international river-water-sharing principle from the ‘Harmon Doctrine’ to the
more equitable sharing propounded in the Helsinki Rules of 1966 and Berlin
Rules of 2004. The ‘Harmon Doctrine’, based on an opinion of former US attorney
general Judson Harmon issued a hundred years ago, holds that a country is
absolutely sovereign over the portion of an international watercourse within
its borders. The CJI said the principle of equality did not imply equal
division of water, but equal consideration and economic opportunity for the
co-basin states.
“To conceive that equality rests on equal
sharing of water within an arithmetical formula would be fundamentally
violative of the established conception of equitable apportionment because the
said concept inheres multiple factors,” the SC said and asked all river water
tribunals to follow this principle.
The SC also referred to the Campione
Consolidation of ILA Rules on International Water Resources 1966-99, which
advocated taking into consideration the inclusion of water of an aquifer, that
is underground water or ‘fossil water’ intercepted by the boundary between two
or more states, while determining the shares of basin states over an
inter-state river.
During its exhaustive search for
principles for equitable sharing of interstate rivers’ water, the SC cited the
National Water Policy of 1987 and 2002, which more or less reiterated the
Helsinkisss Rules. The policies stated that the “drinking-water needs of human
beings and animals be the first charge on any available water”, the SC said.
While welcoming this judgement, I feel
that the larger issues raised by me in respect of “ Natural National Resources
“ in my following 4 year old blog ,
remain unanswered
I urge the Central Government to come out
with a draft legislation for public debate
Needed
- some Simple Answers ! [ 17
Feb 2014 ]
17 Feb 2018
www.hemenparekh.in
/ blogs
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