River Water Disputes: How the Modi Government Has Handled Them

India’s rivers cross state boundaries, and disputes over how their water gets shared have been a recurring source of Centre-state and state-to-state friction for decades. This article explains the legal framework the Modi government put in place to handle these disputes and how it has applied to two of the most prominent ongoing cases.

Why River Water Disputes Are Structurally Difficult

Water as a subject falls under Entry 17 of the State List, giving states primary authority over water within their own borders, but interstate rivers specifically fall under Union oversight through Entry 56 of the Union List, creating an inherent structural tension: individual states control water usage decisions within their territory, but the river itself, and the water-sharing consequences of any single state’s usage decisions, cross state lines, meaning no single state can unilaterally manage a shared river system without affecting downstream or upstream neighbours.

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The 2019 Reform to the Tribunal System

Before 2019, interstate river disputes were handled through a fragmented system of multiple separate tribunals, each established individually to resolve a specific dispute, a process legal analysts consistently criticised for producing prolonged, sometimes decades-long resolution timelines. The Modi government’s Inter-State River Water Disputes (Amendment) Act, 2019, according to PRS India’s tracking of the legislation, replaced this fragmented approach with a single standing tribunal mechanism, designed to resolve individual disputes within a considerably more time-bound framework, typically targeting resolution within two to three years rather than the far longer timelines the older, dispute-specific tribunal system had often produced.

The Criticism of Centralising Water Dispute Resolution

This reform drew specific federalism criticism from legal commentators. Analysis carried by LiveLaw argued the new single-tribunal structure effectively centralised authority over water dispute resolution at the Centre’s expense of the more localised, dispute-specific tribunal approach states had previously operated under, a criticism echoed by Countercurrents’ commentary on the reform, with both pieces arguing the change, whatever its genuine benefits in speeding up resolution timelines, shifted the underlying balance of institutional control over an inherently state-sensitive resource further toward central government machinery.

The Cauvery Water Dispute

The long-running dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over Cauvery river water sharing has continued generating friction even after the Supreme Court’s 2018 verdict on the matter, with the Cauvery Water Management Authority, established following that verdict, repeatedly called on to mediate ongoing flow disputes, including a period of drought-driven tension in 2023 when Karnataka struggled to maintain the Supreme Court-mandated release of 12,000 cusecs to Tamil Nadu, according to coverage compiled by Outlook India and the Water Diplomat. Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister Stalin moved a formal assembly resolution against Karnataka over the dispute in 2023, according to Deccan Herald’s coverage, while the Authority has separately had to balance both states’ competing agricultural water needs against drinking water requirements during periods of scarcity.

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The Krishna and Godavari Disputes

A separate, more recent dispute has emerged between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, two states that only became separate entities following Andhra Pradesh’s 2014 bifurcation, over sharing water from the Krishna and Godavari river systems. Telangana has repeatedly sought central intervention specifically regarding the Almatti dam and the Polavaram-Banakacharla water diversion project, according to The South First’s coverage of the dispute, tensions that reflect how the same bifurcation that created both states as separate political entities also left unresolved questions about how shared river infrastructure and water allocation, previously managed as a single undivided state’s internal matter, should now be divided between two separate governments. In July 2025, the Centre agreed to form a high-level committee specifically to address the Polavaram project and related interstate water issues between the two states, according to News on Air’s coverage, an intervention illustrating the Centre’s continued direct involvement in these disputes even under the newer, more tribunal-centred legal framework the 2019 reform established.

Bottom Line

The Modi government’s 2019 reform replaced India’s fragmented, dispute-specific river tribunal system with a single standing tribunal designed for faster resolution, a change that drew federalism criticism for centralising water dispute authority even as it aimed to address genuinely prolonged earlier resolution timelines, with the ongoing Cauvery dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and the newer Krishna-Godavari tensions between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh both illustrating that the underlying water-sharing disputes themselves remain difficult and often require direct central mediation, tribunal reform or not, to keep functioning even at a basic operational level.

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Abhyudaya Verma