LLM Group 6 Environment and Legal Order Resource Management and The Law 2019 Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: "examine the efficacy" asks for a verdict, and a verdict on a statute is best reached by taking it apart in the order in which it operates. Follow a dispute through the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 from the complaint to the dissolution of the Tribunal, and at each stage say what the Act provides, how it has performed in the record, and whether it achieves its purpose. Bring in the River Boards Act, 1956, which is also present legislation and has never been used. Close with a scorecard and a reasoned conclusion rather than a list of complaints.

The legislation and the test of its efficacy

Article 262 of the Constitution allows Parliament to provide by law for the adjudication of disputes about the use, distribution or control of the waters of inter-State rivers, and to exclude the jurisdiction of all courts over them. Parliament enacted two laws in 1956. The Inter-State River Water Disputes Act creates an adjudicatory machinery of Tribunals, and the River Boards Act provides for advisory Boards and arbitration. Both are still in force; the first has been amended in 1957, 1968, 1980, 1986 and 2002.

Tamil Nadu Cauvery Neerppasana Vilaiporulgal Vivasayigal Nala Urimai Padhugappu Sangam v. Union of India, AIR 1990 SC 1316; (1990) 3 SCC 440, shows both sides. Facts. A registered society of Tamil Nadu farmers came to the Supreme Court under Article 32 in 1983, because Tamil Nadu's request of 1970 had produced only negotiation; twenty-six meetings of Chief Ministers had failed, and in April 1990 the Union declared that it would negotiate no more. Held. Section 4 is mandatory once negotiation has failed, and the Centre was directed to constitute a Tribunal within a month. Why it bears. The farmers could not complain under the Act; they could only compel the Union to act on their State's complaint. Verdict: effective in scope, deficient in standing.

Stage two: constituting the Tribunal

The provision. Section 4(1), substituted in 2002, requires the Central Government to constitute a Tribunal within one year of the request, but only once it is of opinion that the dispute cannot be settled by negotiation. Section 4(2), as it stands since 1968, requires the Chairman and two members to be nominated by the Chief Justice of India from judges of the Supreme Court or a High Court.

The record on interim relief. The Act says nothing about interim orders, and the Cauvery Tribunal first refused to entertain Tamil Nadu's applications because interim relief had not, in its view, been referred to it. In State of Tamil Nadu v. State of Karnataka, 1991 Supp (1) SCC 240, decided on 26 April 1991, the Supreme Court held that the reliefs fell within the reference and directed the Tribunal to decide them on their merits, without deciding whether a Tribunal has a general power to grant interim relief. The Tribunal's interim order of 25 June 1991 then required Karnataka to ensure 205 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) a year at Mettur.

The record on time. The three Tribunals of 1969, on the Krishna, Godavari and Narmada, reported in 1973, 1980 and 1979. The Cauvery Tribunal took seventeen years to its final award of 5 February 2007. The Ravi and Beas Tribunal, constituted in 1986, has never given a final decision, and further references under section 5(3), which carry no outer time limit, have kept it open. Verdict: principled in method, unreliable in time, and the data bank has not ended disputes about figures.

Stage five: implementation

The provision. Section 6A, inserted in 1980, allows the Central Government to frame a scheme establishing an authority to implement the decision, with overriding effect over any other law.

The record. For decades the power was used sparingly, and the Cauvery award went unimplemented. In State of Karnataka v. State of Tamil Nadu, (2018) 4 SCC 1, decided on 16 February 2018, the Union argued that "may" in section 6A left it free not to frame a scheme. Held. The Court rejected that argument, modified the award by moving 14.75 TMC from Tamil Nadu to Karnataka (10 TMC on account of ground water available in Tamil Nadu and 4.75 TMC for the drinking water of Bengaluru), endorsed the monthly releases for fifteen years, and directed a scheme within six weeks. The Cauvery Water Management Authority and Cauvery Water Regulation Committee followed in June 2018. Why it bears. Section 6A is effective when it is used, and it was used only on judicial compulsion. Verdict: a sound tool that the Executive must be made to pick up.

Stage six: finality and the courts

The provision. Section 11 bars every court, including the Supreme Court, from exercising jurisdiction over a water dispute that may be referred to a Tribunal.

Stage seven: dissolution, and the Act that was never used

Section 12 requires the Central Government to dissolve a Tribunal once it has reported and no further reference is needed. Every Tribunal therefore starts again, without the registry, data and expertise of its predecessors.

The River Boards Act, 1956 was meant to prevent disputes before they arose. Section 4 allows River Boards to advise the States on an inter-State river, and section 22 provides for arbitration of differences, and section 8 of the 1956 Disputes Act bars a Tribunal reference of anything arbitrable under it. No River Board has ever been established, so the preventive half of the legislation has had no efficacy at all.

The scorecard

Conclusion. The present legislation is effective at the two things that matter most in principle, an impartial forum and a binding result, and ineffective at the thing that matters most in practice, time. Every serious failure is located at a stage where the Act leaves an executive act undated: the opinion under section 4, publication under section 6 and a scheme under section 6A. Where the courts have stepped in, in 1990, 1991 and 2018, the machinery has moved; where everything has been left to the Tribunal, as on the Ravi and Beas, a Tribunal constituted in 1986 has still not given its final decision. The Act therefore works as a framework, not as a timetable, and its efficacy will improve only when the executive gates carry deadlines with consequences and the preventive River Boards scheme is replaced by basin bodies that are actually constituted.