As the situation in Bengaluru and other parts of Karnataka remained tense through much of the day, with sporadic acts of violence and arson, the Cauvery Supervisory Committee found itself unable to decide on the amount of water to be released to Tamil Nadu.
This comes after the Supreme Court, earlier in the day, modified its September 5 order, and directed Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu every day till September 20.
The court set the next hearing on the matter for September 20, while the supervisory committee will meet on September 19, reported PTI.
The report quoted Union Water Resources Secretary Shashi Shekhar, also the chairperson of the meet saying the committee “could not arrived at a decision for the want of adequate information”.
Shekhar added that both the states failed to provide adequate information, including water utilisation, rainfall patterns and their impact on “actual run-off over period of 29 years” and the Chief Secretaries of both the states disagreed on figures relating to the release of water.
“Since the time given by the honourable (Supreme) Court was so limited...they could not bring all information. The Committee did not want to pass any order which is not backed by supportive data. So, the Committee has fixed another date, that is on September 19, because the Supreme Court has today given a date for next hearing on September 20," he said.
"As we were discussing and trying to reach a figure which would be acceptable to both the states, which were also based on scientific facts, we found that the Supreme Court had given another interim order today. So, we will meet again," Shekhar added.
However, the committee decided to set up a network for data collection to send real-time data to Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry, which all receive Cauvery water, added the PTI report.