The Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956, is an Act of the Parliament of India that provides the legal framework for the adjudication of disputes over the waters of inter-state rivers and river valleys. Its origin lies in the constitutional mandate of Article 262, which empowers Parliament to legislate on the matter and, crucially, allows it to exclude the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and other courts in such disputes. The Act was enacted on August 28, 1956, on the eve of the reorganization of states, to solve the problem of water-sharing conflicts arising from rivers flowing through multiple states.
The mechanism of the Act begins when a state government requests the Union Government to refer a water dispute for adjudication. If the Union Government determines that the dispute cannot be settled through negotiation, it is required to constitute an ad hoc Water Disputes Tribunal. The Tribunal's decision, known as an award, is legally binding on the concerned states and has the same force as an order or decree of the Supreme Court. This mechanism is closely connected to Entry 56 of the Union List, which concerns the regulation and development of inter-state rivers, and the River Boards Act, 1956.
The Act has been amended several times, with the last major amendment being the Inter-State River Water Disputes (Amendment) Act, 2002. This amendment introduced a time-bound process, mandating that the Union Government must set up a Tribunal within one year of receiving a complaint and the Tribunal must give its decision within three years. More recently, the Inter-State River Water Disputes (Amendment) Bill, 2019, was introduced to replace the ad hoc tribunals with a single, permanent tribunal, but the Bill lapsed. The core principle of the Act, which is the exclusion of the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction over referred disputes under Article 262(2), remains a defining feature.