Supreme Court Cases

Article 262 of the Constitution of India has distinctive provisions for adjudicating inter-State river water disputes. It provides for the barring of the jurisdiction of courts, including that of the Supreme Court of India. The Inter-State River Disputes Act, 1956, passed in furtherance of these provisions, bars the jurisdiction of the courts and provides for constituting exclusive tribunals for adjudicating the disputes. Further, the tribunals' awards carry the force of a Supreme Court decree. Yet, the Supreme Court frequently engages with the disputes, ostensibly restricting itself to interpreting the tribunals' decisions and giving effect to them. This has apparently been so until the recent orders of the Supreme Court in the Cauvery dispute. The MoJS Research Chair at the CPR is engaged in a comprehensive analysis of this relationship between the Supreme Court and inter-State river water disputes resolution. Producing this database is one of the first steps. It presents a compilation of the various pronouncements of the Supreme Court since 1956, cataloguing its nuanced engagement with the subject.