Centre brokers Mahanadi water dispute talks between Odisha and Chhattisgarh

Inter-state river water disputes are a structural feature of Indian federalism, rooted in the constitutional division of legislative competence over water. Entry 17 of the State List (Seventh Schedule) designates water — including irrigation, drainage, and water supplies — as a state subject, giving states primary jurisdiction over rivers within their territory. However, Entry 56 of the Union List empowers Parliament to regulate and develop inter-state rivers and river valleys to the extent declared expedient in the public interest. This tension between state sovereignty over water and Union supervisory authority over shared rivers is the constitutional seedbed of disputes like the one over the Mahanadi.

Article 262 of the Constitution specifically provides for Parliament to adjudicate inter-state water disputes and, crucially, to bar the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court or any other court in such matters. Parliament operationalised this through the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956, which empowers the Union government to constitute a Tribunal when a state government makes a request and negotiations have failed. The Tribunal's award, once published in the Official Gazette, has the same force as a decree of the Supreme Court. This framework has been invoked for major disputes — the Cauvery, Krishna, Godavari, Narmada, and now the Mahanadi — each illustrating how shared river systems strain cooperative federalism.

The Mahanadi originates in Chhattisgarh and flows eastward through Odisha before draining into the Bay of Bengal. As the upstream state, Chhattisgarh controls the river's catchment; as the downstream state, Odisha is acutely sensitive to any reduction in non-monsoon flows. The dispute formally surfaced when Odisha alleged that Chhattisgarh had unilaterally constructed multiple barrages on the river, reducing downstream availability for agriculture and drinking water.