Supreme Court asks all stakeholder states to hold meeting on Delhi water crisis

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, June 3

As Delhi faces an acute water crisis amid scorching heatwave conditions, the Supreme Court (SC) on Monday asked the Centre to convene an emergency meeting of the Upper Yamuna River Board on June 5 with all stakeholders to deal with the situation.

The stakeholders to be represented in the meeting of the board included the Centre and the governments of Delhi, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

A Vacation Bench of Justice PK Mishra and Justice KV Viswanathan asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to inform it of the measures suggested by the Upper Yamuna River Board and posted the matter for further hearing on June 6.

At the very outset, the Bench suggested that there should be a meeting of all stakeholders to resolve the issue and asked Mehta to organise a meeting by Tuesday.

Mehta said there was already a mechanism in the form of the Upper Yamuna River Board, where all stakeholders were represented. He, however, said it would take a couple of days to convene such a meeting.

While asking the Centre to convene the meeting of the Upper Yamuna River Board on June 5, the Bench sought to emphasise that all parties — the Centre and the governments of Delhi, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh — have agreed not to treat it as an adversarial issue.

The direction came on the Delhi Government’s plea seeking a direction to the Haryana Government to release surplus water provided by Himachal Pradesh to deal with the water crisis in the national capital.