Water Resources and Groundwater Law: The Central Ground Water Authority, the Right to Water, Public Trust, Rivers, Lakes, Ponds and Floodplains

India has about eighteen per cent of the world's population but only about four per cent of its fresh water. It is the largest user of groundwater in the world: groundwater supplies most of its irrigation and drinking water. Tube wells made the Green Revolution possible, but in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi and much of peninsular India, water tables are falling fast, and groundwater is increasingly contaminated with arsenic, fluoride, nitrate and uranium. At the same time, the lakes, tanks and ponds that once stored rainwater have been encroached, and rivers have been choked by sewage and floodplain construction. Water law in India combines old property rules, environmental regulation, the right to water under Article 21, and the public trust doctrine.

1. Groundwater Regulation: Legal Background

Water is a State subject (Entry 17, List II), subject to Entry 56 of List I on inter-State rivers. There is no comprehensive central groundwater statute. The traditional rule, reflected in Section 7(g) of the Indian Easements Act, 1882, treats groundwater as an incident of land ownership: every landowner may collect and dispose of water under the land within his own limits. This 'absolute ownership' rule favours those who can afford deep tube wells, ignores the shared nature of aquifers, and contributed to over-extraction.

The Centre circulated a Model Groundwater Bill in 1970 (revised in 1992, 2005 and 2011), and several States enacted groundwater laws requiring registration of wells and permits in notified areas. The Model Groundwater (Sustainable Management) Bill, 2017 proposed treating groundwater as a common pool resource held in public trust, with priority for drinking water and aquifer-based planning, but has not been widely adopted. The main national regulator is therefore the Central Ground Water Authority.

2. The Central Ground Water Authority

In M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (1996 to 1997), on the depletion of groundwater in Delhi and elsewhere, the Supreme Court directed the Centre to constitute an authority under the Environment (Protection) Act. The Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) was constituted on 14 January 1997 under Section 3(3) of the EPA. It regulates and controls groundwater development and management, issues directions, and notifies areas for regulation. The Central Ground Water Board serves as its technical arm and conducts the periodic Dynamic Ground Water Resources Assessment. In States with their own groundwater laws and authorities, the State authority regulates, and the CGWA covers the rest.

2.1 Groundwater extraction and assessment units

Groundwater availability is assessed by assessment units (blocks, mandals or talukas). The stage of extraction (annual extraction as a percentage of annual extractable resource) determines the category: safe (up to 70 per cent), semi-critical (70 to 90), critical (90 to 100) and over-exploited (above 100 per cent, where more is extracted than is recharged), with saline units assessed separately. Recent national assessments place roughly one in nine assessment units in the over-exploited category, concentrated in the north-west (Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi) and parts of the south.

2.2 No objection certificates for groundwater

The CGWA regulates extraction through Guidelines, the current version notified on 24 September 2020 after the NGT, in Shailesh Singh v. Hotel Holiday Regency, Moradabad (O.A. No. 176 of 2015), faulted the earlier 2018 guidelines for permitting extraction in over-exploited areas and directed a stricter regime. Under the 2020 Guidelines:

• industries, infrastructure projects, mining projects, bulk water suppliers, commercial units and large residential societies extracting groundwater require a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the CGWA (through an online portal);
• exemptions apply to individual domestic consumers, rural drinking water schemes, the armed forces, agricultural users, and micro and small enterprises drawing less than ten cubic metres per day;
• NOCs for new industries in over-exploited areas are generally not granted (except for certain categories such as MSMEs and strategic or drinking water needs), and existing users must reduce extraction;
• NOC holders must pay groundwater abstraction charges on a graded scale that increases with the quantity and the criticality of the area, install digital flow meters and piezometers with telemetry, undertake recharge measures, and submit water audits; and
• extraction without NOC attracts environmental compensation (with a minimum amount) and sealing of borewells.

2.3 Industrial groundwater use

Industrial extraction is a flashpoint. The best-known case is Plachimada in Kerala, where the Coca-Cola bottling plant was accused of depleting and polluting groundwater. In Perumatty Grama Panchayat v. State of Kerala (2004), a single judge of the Kerala High Court held that groundwater is a national wealth held in public trust and that the company had no right to extract it in a manner that harmed others; a Division Bench (2005) partly reversed this, allowing limited extraction on the basis that a landowner may draw reasonable quantities. The plant closed in 2004, and the Kerala Assembly later passed a bill for a tribunal to award compensation to affected residents, which did not receive Presidential assent. Today, industries must obtain NOCs, recycle water, and in stressed areas use treated wastewater.

3. Groundwater Recharge, Rainwater Harvesting and Groundwater Pollution

3.1 Groundwater recharge and rainwater harvesting

Recharge replenishes aquifers through check dams, percolation tanks, recharge wells, restoration of tanks and ponds, and protection of recharge zones. Rainwater harvesting collects rooftop and surface runoff for storage or recharge. Many States and cities have made rooftop rainwater harvesting mandatory in building bye-laws for plots above a size, and the CGWA conditions NOCs on recharge. National programmes include the Atal Bhujal Yojana (2019), a community-led groundwater management scheme in water-stressed States, and the Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain campaign. Tamil Nadu was an early leader with mandatory rainwater harvesting from 2003.

3.2 Groundwater pollution

Groundwater is polluted by geogenic contaminants (arsenic in the Gangetic and Brahmaputra plains, fluoride in Rajasthan, Telangana and elsewhere, uranium in parts of Punjab), and by human sources: industrial effluents discharged into pits or injected through 'reverse boring', leachate from dumps, sewage, and nitrates and pesticides from agriculture. Once polluted, aquifers are very hard to clean. The Water Act applies: 'pollution' includes contamination of wells and subterranean waters, and Section 24 prohibits discharge of poisonous or polluting matter into any stream or well. The Supreme Court's Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action (Bichhri, 1996) and Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum (1996) cases arose from industrial contamination of groundwater. The Contaminated Sites Rules, 2025 now provide for identification and remediation of contaminated aquifers.

4. The Right to Water and the Public Trust Doctrine

4.1 Right to water

The Constitution does not expressly guarantee a right to water, but the Supreme Court has read it into Article 21. In Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar, (1991) 1 SCC 598, it held that the right to life includes the right to enjoyment of pollution-free water and air. In Narmada Bachao Andolan v. Union of India, (2000) 10 SCC 664, it said that water is the basic need for the survival of human beings and is part of the right to life. In A.P. Pollution Control Board v. Prof. M.V. Nayudu (II), (2001) 2 SCC 62, it recognised the right of access to drinking water as fundamental to life and held that the State must provide clean drinking water. In State of Karnataka v. State of Tamil Nadu (Cauvery), (2018) 4 SCC 1, it held that drinking water has the highest priority in the allocation of river waters. Internationally, the UN General Assembly recognised the human right to water and sanitation in 2010.

4.2 Water as a public trust resource

The doctrine has since been applied to groundwater (Plachimada, 2004), tanks and lakes (Intellectuals Forum, 2006), and ponds (Jagpal Singh, 2011). It gives water law a normative anchor: water is not simply property but a common heritage held in trust.

5. River, Lake and Pond Conservation

5.1 River conservation

India's river conservation efforts began with the Ganga Action Plan (1985) and the National River Conservation Plan (1995). The National Ganga River Basin Authority (2009) and later the National Mission for Clean Ganga (Namami Gange, 2014) followed. The River Ganga (Rejuvenation, Protection and Management) Authorities Order, 2016, made under the EPA, created a National Ganga Council chaired by the Prime Minister and authorities at State and district levels, prohibited discharge of untreated sewage and effluents and construction in the river's active floodplain, and required maintenance of ecological flows; minimum e-flows for the upper Ganga were notified in 2018. The NGT's 2017 Ganga judgment (no-development zone of 100 metres, dumping ban within 500 metres) and the Yamuna orders (Manoj Mishra, 2015) added judicial monitoring. The Uttarakhand High Court in Mohd. Salim v. State of Uttarakhand (2017) declared the Ganga and Yamuna legal persons, but the Supreme Court stayed that order.

5.2 Lake conservation

Urban lakes and tanks store floodwater, recharge groundwater and support biodiversity, but have been encroached, filled and turned into sewage sinks, notably in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. The National Plan for Conservation of Aquatic Ecosystems (combining the lake and wetland programmes, 2013) and the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017 (Topic 27) support conservation. In Intellectuals Forum, Tirupathi v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (2006) 3 SCC 549, the Supreme Court applied the public trust doctrine and sustainable development to restrain the conversion of tanks into housing, emphasising their role in groundwater recharge. The NGT in Forward Foundation (upheld in Mantri Techzone, 2019) fixed buffer zones around Bengaluru's lakes.

5.3 Protection of ponds and encroachment of water bodies

Village ponds (johads, talabs) and tanks are common property resources vital for livestock, recharge and local ecology. In Hinch Lal Tiwari v. Kamala Devi, (2001) 6 SCC 496, the Supreme Court set aside the allotment of land recorded as a pond for house construction and directed its restoration, holding that material resources of the community such as ponds must be protected for a proper ecological balance. In Jagpal Singh v. State of Punjab, (2011) 11 SCC 396, it held that village common land (including ponds) illegally occupied must be restored to the village, that regularisation of illegal encroachments is permissible only in exceptional cases, and directed all States to frame schemes for eviction of encroachers. High Courts and the NGT have since ordered surveys and restoration of water bodies, and many States have enacted tank or water body protection laws.

6. Floodplains and Floodplain Regulation

A floodplain is the flat land along a river that is periodically flooded. It stores floodwater, recharges aquifers, supports agriculture and biodiversity, and gives the river room to move. Construction in floodplains increases flood damage (as in Chennai 2015, Kerala 2018 and the Yamuna floods in Delhi in 2023) and destroys the river's ecological functions.

Floodplain zoning divides floodplains by flood frequency and restricts land use in the most flood-prone zones. The Central Water Commission circulated a Model Bill for Flood Plain Zoning in 1975, but only a few States (such as Manipur, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir) enacted laws, and implementation is weak. Other tools include: the Ganga Authorities Order, 2016, which prohibits construction in the active floodplain; master plan provisions (such as Zone O for the Yamuna in Delhi); the NGT's orders in Manoj Mishra v. Union of India (2015), which prohibited construction and dumping on the Yamuna floodplain and imposed Rs 5 crore on the Art of Living Foundation for damage caused by its 2016 festival; and river regulation zone proposals that have not yet been finalised.

7. Inter-State River Environmental Issues

Under Article 262, Parliament may provide for adjudication of disputes relating to inter-State rivers and may exclude the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 provides for tribunals, and Section 11 bars the jurisdiction of courts over matters referred to them. Major disputes include the Cauvery, Krishna, Godavari, Narmada, Mahadayi and Ravi-Beas. In the Cauvery appeal, (2018) 4 SCC 1, the Supreme Court held that rivers are national assets, that no State can claim exclusive ownership, that drinking water needs have primacy, and that equitable apportionment must consider groundwater and sustainability.

Environmental issues in inter-State rivers include ecological flows below dams, pollution crossing State boundaries (as in the Yamuna between Haryana and Delhi), inter-basin transfers (the Ken-Betwa link, which affects Panna Tiger Reserve), dam safety (the Dam Safety Act, 2021), and the impact of upstream sand mining and diversions on downstream deltas. Tribunals have traditionally focused on allocation of water rather than environmental flows, but courts and the NGT increasingly require e-flows and pollution control as part of river governance.

8. Critical Appraisal

India's water law is fragmented: groundwater is governed by an outdated property rule modified by CGWA guidelines and patchy State laws; rivers by a mix of pollution law, basin authorities and dispute tribunals; and lakes and ponds largely by judicial intervention. The exemption of agriculture, which uses about ninety per cent of groundwater, from NOC requirements limits the CGWA's impact, and subsidised electricity for pumps encourages over-extraction. The recognition of the right to water and the public trust doctrine gives a strong normative foundation, but the gap between principle and practice is wide. A comprehensive framework law treating groundwater as a common resource, aquifer mapping and community management, protection of water bodies from encroachment, and floodplain zoning are urgent needs.

9. Related Topics and Provisions