NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the 2007 Cauvery tribunal award with minor tweaks. It increased Karnataka ’s water share from the river by 14.75 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft), considering the very high demand for potable water in Bengaluru city, and lessened Tamil Nadu ’s share to the same extent.The court left Kerala ’s and Puducherry ’s shares untouched and said that the arrangement would be in place for 15 years. The court also directed Karnataka, which had refused to release any water downstream at Billigundulu, to release 177.25 tmcft of water annually.Rivers are national assets and no state can claim them as its own asset. River water must be shared on an equitable basis among states, a bench led by CJI Dipak Misra and comprising Justices Amitava Roy and AM Khanwilkar said.The dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over sharing Cauvery is several decades’ old. In 2007, an inter-state water disputes tribunal awarded Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry 270, 419, 30 and 7 tmcft water, respectively. A mechanism to implement this award never took off as the Centre did not set up a mechanism. As a result, both states went back to squabbling on the issue. The case eventually landed up before SC, with Karnataka and Tamil Nadu raising their grievances against the tribunal award.Appearing before the court, the Centre urged the court to lay off the issue and said that it would sort it out. The Supreme Court, however, rejected the plea and heard out cross appeals against the tribunal award and ordered that it be implemented with minor tweaks.“This principle of equitable apportionment as is now intrinsically embedded generally in pursuit for apportionment of water of an international drainage basin straddling over two or more states predicates that every riparian state is entitled to a fair share of the water according to its need, imbued with the philosophy that a river has been provided by nature for the common benefit of the community as a whole through whose territory it flows even though those territories may be divided by frontiers as postulated in law,” the court noted.It felt that it would be safe to assume that 33 tmcft would meet the drinking and domestic water requirement of Karnataka. It also acknowledged the constraints suffered by Karnataka, resulting in its limited access and use of the flow of water in Cauvery in spite of being the upper riparian state and the drought conditions in 28 districts/taluks and awarded the state an extra 14.75 tmcft.