Hello Gangadhar , Thank you for your alertness . The Registrar of the Supreme Court must have come to know by now the facts you have stated and acted for damage-control . However , after reading today's Times of India News Paper , I feel satisfaction that the Supreme Court has established its supremacy perfectly-well to ensure Rule of Law . I present the facts of the Judgement below for your perusal . 1. K'taka gets earful from SC for protests against its order 2. Water To TN Reduced From 15k To 12k Cusecs Daily. 3.The Supreme Court gave an earful to Kannadigas violently protesting against its September 5 order for release of 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water daily to Tamil Nadu and slammed the Congress regime in Karnataka for succumbing to rowdyism and seeking review of the order. In a special sitting on Monday , a holiday for the court, a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and U U Lalit reduced the release of Cauvery water from 15,000 cusecs to 12,000 cusecs a day, but not before rebuking the Siddaramaiah government for approaching the SC on Sunday with an application that exhibited its failure in controlling mob violence against the SC's order. 4. Appearing for Karnataka, senior lawyer Fali S Nariman was quick to abandon the grounds for seeking modification of the September 5 order and even termed them “erroneous“. Karnataka had cited “spontaneous agitation“ in Bengaluru, Mandya, Mysuru and Hassan in the Cauvery basin and said it had paralysed normal life and public property worth hundreds of crores of rupees was vandalised. Nariman expressed regret and the bench accepted it. The SC blamed the state authorities and reiterated that it was the government's duty to maintain law and order and ensure compliance of the order. 5. If Karnataka had thought citing violence would evoke the SC's sympathy , the bench's reaction was diametrically opposite. It slammed both, the Kannadigas who unleashed violence and the Karnataka government, and said, “An order of the SC has to be complied with by all concerned and it is the obligation of the executive to see that the order is complied with in letter and spirit. Concept of deviancy has no room, and disobedience has no space.“ 6. Lecturing the protesters, the bench said: “Citizens cannot become a law unto themselves. When a court of law passes an order, it is the sacred duty of citizens to obey the same. If there is any grievance, they are obligated under the law to take recourse to permissible legal remedy .“ It added: “We expect the inhabitants of both states, TN and Karnataka, shall behave and the executives of both states are under the constitutional obligation to see that law and order prevails.“ 7. The SC criticised the Karnataka government application for modification of the September 5 order, indicating that it did not reflect the “permissible legal recourse“. The bench said, “The tenor of the application filed by the Karnataka government does not reflect so, but, on the contrary , demonstrates otherwise. We decry it.“ 8. Abandoning violence as a ground for seeking modification, Nariman said Tamil Nadu was not starved of water. “Tamil Nadu's reservoir at Mettur has more water than total water stored in Karnataka's reservoir.“ He said outflow from Mettur reservoir to the systems dependent on it was 1,250 cusecs per day for `samba' crops against a total release of 84,168 cusecs at Billigundulu by Karnataka from September 5 till September 12. 9. Apprehending shortage of water for drinking and irrigation in Karnataka, Nari man requested the SC to keep the September 5 order in abeyance as “the supervisory committee is meeting on Monday to decide the necessity (of releasing additional water) having regard to the plight of both states“. Nariman was assisted by senior advocates Anil B Divan and S S Javali. 10. For Tamil Nadu, senior advocates Shekhar Naphade, Rakesh Dwivedi and Subramonium Prasadsaid flawed facts were presented before the court to divert attention from the fact that Tamil Nadu did not have adequate storage of water to meet the demand during this critical period. The senior advocates criticised Karnataka for seeking modification of the order on the ground of law and order situation. 11. The bench rejected the plea for keeping its September 5 order in abeyance and said it had a cascading effect as Tamil Nadu was to release proportionate water to Puducherry .
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