Madras Agreement

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Karnataka`s claim that the 1892 and 1924 agreements between the British presidency of Madra and the princely state of Mysore could not have served as the basis for a court decision, as they were imposed on Mysore, which could not negotiate. The Chamber of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Judge Amitavsa Roy and Judge A.M Khanwilkar, who heard the appeals against the 2007 Cauvery Water Tribunal sentence, described the 1892 and 1924 agreements as “a greater public interest without political elements” and stated that at no time after the reorganization of states in 1956, Karnataka had never opposed it. Over time, the agreement was perceived as unfair to both states. While Mysore was unhappy with the lack of a definition of Madras` prescription rights, Madras was disappointed that Madras was not allowed to use water beyond its rights, which cannot be used. The provisions of the agreement made it clear that the state of Mysore should not start a development project on the Cauvery without obtaining the consent of the Madras presidency. Madras` presidency, on the other hand, should not ban the project unless it contradicts the prescribed rights they had already acquired. It is interesting to note that the agreement could not codify what those normative rights were. But the current problems with Cauvery water date back to 1807, when the state of Mysore launched development projects on the river and the Madras government disapproved of it. This first dispute between the two governments led to the agreement of 1892, and again in 1924. Currently, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are arguing over the sharing of Cauvery`s water, but the exact origin of the disagreement is the 1924 treaty signed between a former British province and the princely state. In the decades following the 1920s, internal borders and policies within the country changed considerably, but regulations established in an agreement under colonial rule simmered the two states. Much of the current quarrels between the two states stem from some contradictory claims by Karnataka and Tamil Nadu regarding the 1924 agreement.

The Karnataka government believes that since the 1924 agreement is expected to expire after 50 years, its clauses cannot be applied to today`s water allocation. Second, the State asserts that, considering that Tamil Nadu was a British province and Karnataka a princely state at the time of the signing of the agreement, the latter did not have the freedom to represent its interests as firmly as it would have liked. Concerned about the Andhra Pradesh government`s decision to increase the height of control dams on the Palar River in violation of water-sharing agreements, farmers and activists in Vellore County have requested the Supreme Court`s intervention in the case. “The newly formed states have never denied the 1892 and 1924 agreements under the Reorganization Act of 1956. Therefore, both agreements remained in force, although the Reorganization Act of 1956 came into force,” it reads. Even though Karnataka`s claim that Mysore did not have bargaining power at the time of the conclusion of the 1892 and 1924 treaties were to be accepted, the court stated: “. Karnataka acquired said bargaining power under the 1947 Act and definitively after the entry into force of the Indian Constitution” and “decided not to denounce it”. The treaty included a clause obliging the British to support Hyder Ali if he was attacked by his neighbors. Hyder felt that this agreement was broken when he received no help when Mysore went to war against the Marathas in 1771.

The bad faith resulting from the broken clause may have been a reason for the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Mysore War a decade later. [1] “Therefore, it cannot be said that the above-mentioned agreements are unscrupulous,” the judgment states. The shortcomings of the 1892 agreement were revealed when Mysore proposed the construction of the Kanambadi Dam on the Cauvery in 1910. Almost at the same time, Madras proposed an irrigation project on the river. The state of Madras opposed the second phase of the Kanambadi project and eventually had to be consulted by the Indian government. Writing about the historical context of the Cauvery conflict, political scientist Midatala Rani says that at the end of the 19th century, the relationship between the madras presidency and the state of Mysore was one of “sovereign power and feudal unity.” “For these reasons, the British government of the day preferred Madras,” she wrote. In 1807, when madras` presidency disapproved of Mysore`s irrigation plans for the Cauvery and the two states could not agree, the matter had to be taken up by the Indian government, which was then in British hands. Consisting of 10 clauses, the 1924 agreement stipulated that Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry would now be allocated 75% of Cauvery`s water, at least for the next 50 years, while 23% would be given to Mysore and the rest would go into the hands of Kerala or Travancore at the time. Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, believes that the 1924 agreement was the premise on which various development projects had taken place in both states. Therefore, a change in the fundamental nature of the agreement would be detrimental to both states. Second, they claim that when the agreement was first negotiated, it was assumed that its clauses would be reviewed after 50 years, but not completely changed. The judgment states that the two agreements are not political arrangements, but “cover areas of overriding public interest that have no political element, and in this context the agreements are neither ineffective nor completely extinguished.” The Treaty of Madras was a peace treaty signed on 4 April 1769 between Mysore and the British Company (Lord Verelst) of the East Indies, ending the First Anglo-Mysore War.

By 1767, fighting had broken out and Hyder Ali`s troops were about to conquer Madras. Thanks to the intervention of the British government, the General Agreement of 1892 was signed between the two states. The agreement, titled “Rules Defining the Boundaries Within which the State of Mysore May Not Build New Irrigation Systems Without Prior Reference to the Madras Government,” established six rules for negotiation between the two states regarding Cauvery water. Initially, the government left it to the two states to reach an agreement between them, but when this seemed impossible, an arbitral tribunal chaired by Sir Henry Griffin was appointed to investigate the case. Under his leadership, an agreement was reached on February 18, 1924, which was to be valid for the next 50 years. The PA government, which violated the Madras de Mysore Agreement of 1892, increased the height of the dam. The Government of Andhra Pradesh has raised the height of a dam on the tributary of the Palar River at Sammandipalli in Chittoor District, in violation of the riparian rights of Tamil Nadu farmers. The letter from the Government of Karnataka dated 20.7.2021 stated that the Honourable Prime Minister of Tamil Nadu by letter dated 04.07.2021 requested the State of Karnataka not to include the Mekedatu project.

Subsequently, the DPR of the Mekedatu Balancing Reservoir Drinking Water Project was submitted to the CAC by the Karnataka government in January 2019, and copies of the DPR were forwarded to the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) for approval from the co-basin states to accept the DPR. Chennai, called Madras until 1996, is located on the Coromandel coast in southeastern India and is the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu. The city played a central role on the trade routes that crossed the Bay of Bengal and was called the “gateway to South India” and functions not only as a resting place for merchants on their travels from the Spice Islands to the west, but also as a center of economic and cultural activities. From the 17th century, Madras became a city of central importance within the British network of maritime trade routes, exporting locally produced cotton and chintz, as well as many spices and other cargoes imported from the East. Cauvery, the “Dakshina Ganga” or the Southern Ganges and the fourth largest river in southern India, was the economic backbone of the states it passes through, with its effects felt most intensely in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. In these two states, the river is almost the mother goddess, intertwined with the identity of the people there. It is celebrated in music and literature and praised in prayer and legends. But the same sacred river has been the bone of contention between the two states for decades. This information was given today by the Minister of Union for Jal Shakti, Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.

The competition for Cauvery between Tamil Nadu and today`s Karnataka dates back to the 11th century AD. Chikkadeva Wodeyar of Mysore is said to have attempted to stop the flow of Cauvery to the Tamil regions in order to settle accounts with Chokkanath Naik of the Kingdom of Madurai. .