The Supreme Court Tuesday decided to refer the dispute on the Mullaperiyar dam between Tamil Nadu and Kerala to its larger five-judge constitution bench.
A three-judge bench of Justice D.K. Jain, Justice M.K. Sharma and Justice R.M. Lodha decided to refer the row to the court's constitution bench, saying that it had "substantive questions of constitutional law" involved in it.
The bench decided to have the matter examined constitutionally after senior counsel K. Parasaran for Tamil Nadu and Rajeev Dhawan for Kerala too agreed that it had delicate issues of constitutional law involved in it.
The 113-year-old Mullaperiyar dam, located in Kerala's Idukki district, has become a major issue between Kerala and Tamil Nadu. While Kerala wants decommissioning of the dam on the ground that it has exceeded its life-span and poses a threat to lives of millions of people in the state in case of its possible collapse, Tamil Nadu is fiercely opposed to any such move as the dam, despite being in Kerala, is controlled by it.
The erstwhile kingdom of Travancore, now part of Kerala, had leased out 8,000 acres of its land in 1886 for 999 years to the then British rulers for construction of the dam, which was eventually commissioned in 1895.
The 1886 lease deed, known as the Periyar Lease Deed, was amended in 1970 to give Kerala an exclusive right of fishing in the Periyar water while Tamil Nadu was given an exclusive right to generate electricity from the dam on payment of Rs.12 to Rs.18 per kilo watt of generated power to Kerala.
Earlier, in 2007 the apex court had allowed Tamil Nadu to raise the water level in the dam from 136 feet to 142 feet.
Kerala, however, subsequently enacted a law, negating the Supreme Court judgement and restraining Tamil Nadu from raising the water level beyond 136 feet.
It further obtained environmental clearance from the central environment ministry for constructing a new dam after demolishing the existing one.
Tamil Nadu then approached the apex court, challenging the Kerala law and its move to demolish the dam.