CAUVERY ISSUE - SUPREME COURT JURISDICTION 16-Feb-2018

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Water Resources, Government of India which, to reiterate, attested
that groundwater is an important source of irrigation and caters to
more than 45% of the total irrigation in the country and that the
contribution of groundwater irrigation to achieve self-sufficiency in
food grains production in the past three decades had been
phenomenal. It mentioned in its report that although the
groundwater is an annually replenishable resource, yet its
availability is non-uniform in space and time and though for
planning its development, a precise estimation of groundwater
resource and irrigation potential is a necessary pre-requisite, yet
such an exercise is rather difficult as techniques are currently not
available for direct measurement. The report further enumerated
the items of supply to and disposal from groundwater reservoirs.
The Tribunal noted that for irrigation, there are three sources of
water supply, namely, rainfall, surface flow of any river which can
be taken to different areas through canal system and groundwater
which can be taken out through open wells or tube-wells. Reverting
to the Cauvery basin, the Tribunal marked that it was an admitted
position that the variability in time and quantity of rainfall from the
South-West monsoon and the North-East monsoon in some years