The Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) is a statutory, quasi-judicial body established by the Central Government in June 2018. Its creation was mandated by the Supreme Court's 2018 judgment, which modified the final award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT). The CWMA was constituted under the Cauvery Water Management Scheme, 2018, which itself was framed under Section 6A of the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956. The Authority was formed to solve the long-standing inter-state dispute over the sharing of the Cauvery River's waters among the basin states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and the Union Territory of Puducherry. It replaced the earlier ad-hoc Cauvery River Authority to provide a permanent, independent mechanism for water management.
The CWMA's primary function is to secure compliance and implementation of the modified water-sharing formula. It regulates the storage, apportionment, and distribution of Cauvery waters, and supervises the operation of major reservoirs. A key mechanism is ensuring Karnataka releases water according to the prescribed schedule at the inter-state contact point, the Billigundulu gauge and discharge station. In years of poor rainfall, the CWMA determines how the water shortage, or "distress," will be shared proportionately among the states. The CWMA is assisted by the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC), which functions as its technical and implementing arm, monitoring reservoir levels and submitting recommendations for monthly water releases. The CWMA is headquartered in New Delhi and operates under the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti, a change formalized by a notification on April 24, 2020. The constitutional basis for resolving such disputes is Article 262.