Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday asked Karnataka to release 9,000 cusecs of Cauvery river on a daily basis water to Tamil Nadu between Sep 20 and Oct 15.
The release of water is a distress measure, due to the failure of the monsoon this year.
Singh's ruling came at the end of a Cauvery River Authority meeting here at his residence attended by the chief ministers of Karanataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry and the water resources minister of Kerala, according to union water resources ministry officials.
The meeting took place after a nine-year gap, with the last meeting held in 2003 during the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Karnataka has already been releasing 10,000 cusecs daily from Sep 12 on the directions of the Supreme Court.