The Supreme Court today pulled up the PMO officials for not holding a meeting of Cauvery River Authority (CRA), headed by the Prime Minister, to resolve the water-sharing dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

A bench of justices D K Jain and Madan B Lokur expressed surprise that the meeting of CRA, comprising chief ministers of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Kerala, has not taken place as the PMO is trying to fix a date convenient to all members.

"It is surprising and shocking that you require consent of the states for even fixing the date for the meeting. For fixing a date, it requires the convenience of the PM or the convenience of states?" the bench asked.

The court had earlier asked the government to convene a meeting of the committee to resolve the dispute.

The bench further said the affidavit filed by Karnataka had used "serious words" and wondered whether the PMO is even aware about it.

"It is shocking. It seems officers in PMO have not seen the affidavit filed by Karnataka. Karnataka's affidavit used serious words. We expressed our anguish on that on the last hearing itself. Only our blood pressure is raised. Please call senior officers. PMO may not be aware of this. We are short of words because it involves the highest functionary," it said.

The court adjourned the case for September 7 and asked the Centre to inform it about the meeting of CRA.

The Centre on August 30 had told the apex court that it would soon convene a CRA meeting, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to consider Tamil Nadu's plea for release of 25.373 tmfct (thousand million cubic feet) of water from Cauvery river to save the state's standing crops.

In its affidavit, the Centre had said it had written to Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry on the proposed meeting for their consent as the meeting was subject to the availability of the quorum.

In its application, Tamil Nadu had said during the current irrigation year 2012-2013, though the south west monsoon is not vigorous in the Cauvery catchment of Karnataka, the state of Karnataka has received 21.9 TMCft of inflow in its four major reservoirs up to July 20.

"But it has not shared the water with Tamil Nadu. Instead it started to build the storages in its 4 major reservoirs and letting water in the canals of Krishna Raja Sagar for irrigation with the result that the state of Tamil Nadu has been deprived of its due share of water as per the interim order of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal," the application said.

It had complained that over the years, Karnataka did not agree to the distress sharing formula evolved by the Central Water Commission/Cauvery Monitoring Committee, with the result that it "resorts to impounding all the flows in its reservoirs depriving the state of Tamil Nadu in getting its legitimate flows, more so during the lean years, thus aggravating the distress situation."

Tamil Nadu had said "during the current irrigation season 2012-13 also, the southwest monsoon has not been active so far in the Catchment area of Cauvery, with the result that there is a distress situation and since there is no agreed formula for sharing the flows in such distress years, the state is put to hardship."