Ground Water Regulation and Rights: A Critical Overview

Groundwater is the invisible backbone of India’s water economy. It supplies about 80% of domestic water needs and 45% of irrigation requirements across the country. Yet, legally speaking, this critical resource has historically been treated not as a public good but as a private entitlement attached to land ownership. Understanding how India regulates groundwater – and why that regulation has struggled to keep pace with the scale of exploitation – is essential for anyone studying water law, rural governance, or environmental policy.

The starting point: groundwater as private property 🔗

India’s foundational rule on groundwater ownership traces back to the Indian Easements Act, 1882. Under this colonial-era law, the right to groundwater was tied directly to land ownership. A landowner was entitled to access and extract water from beneath their own property, essentially treating groundwater as an extension of the land itself. This principle was borrowed from English common law – specifically the rule in Acton v Blundell (1843) – which held that a landowner could extract subterranean water freely, regardless of the impact on neighbouring properties or shared aquifers.

The practical effect of this framework was significant: groundwater rights tied to land ownership excluded a large portion of society that had no land rights, giving landowners the freedom to extract water without any legal ceiling. Landless farmers, marginalised communities, and rural women – who had no formal land title – had no corresponding right to the water lying beneath the very soil they worked.

There was one notable limitation built into the 1882 Act: if groundwater flowed through a defined channel (i.e., a recognisable underground watercourse), the landowner could not extract it freely. However, this exception was narrowly applied and rarely enforced, largely because underground channels were difficult to identify with the technology available at the time.

How technology changed everything 🔗

For much of India’s history, groundwater extraction was constrained by practical limits – hand-dug wells and simple pumps could only draw so much water. The real disruption came with the spread of electric and diesel-powered submersible pumps and mechanised drilling rigs from the 1960s onwards. Suddenly, extraction was no longer a matter of physical effort but of financial capacity. Whoever could afford the equipment could sink a borewell and pump water at rates far beyond what shallow wells ever allowed.

This technological shift had major legal consequences. The old common law principle – which assumed that individual extraction had limited impact on the broader aquifer – became dangerously outdated. Deep tubewells and borewells could tap aquifers shared by entire regions, meaning one landowner’s extraction could deplete water tables for hundreds of surrounding households and farms. The rules concerning groundwater allocation linked to land gave groundwater law a strong property focus, which became increasingly problematic as usage and demand grew.

The explosion of groundwater use that followed was dramatic. According to the World Bank, India is the world’s largest groundwater user, extracting an estimated 230 cubic kilometres per year – more than a quarter of the global total. A legal system designed for 19th-century hand pumps was wholly unequipped to handle this.

The shift to state regulation: legislative milestones 🔗

Recognising that private property-based rules could not govern a shared natural resource at this scale, the Indian state began asserting regulatory authority over groundwater in a series of steps.

The Central Ground Water Board and the Model Bills 🔗

The Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) was established in 1970 as the apex national agency for assessment, monitoring, and regulation of groundwater resources. In the same year, the Central Government also introduced the first Model Groundwater Bill, which it circulated to states as a template for enacting their own legislation. This early model was essentially a command-and-control framework – it required registration of wells and mandated a licensing system for extraction in notified areas.

However, the 1970 model had critical gaps. It focused almost entirely on landowners, ignored the interests of the landless, and excluded meaningful public participation or local governance bodies from the regulatory process. Most states were slow to adopt even this limited framework.

The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and the CGWA 🔗

The next significant shift came through environmental law rather than dedicated water legislation. The Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) was constituted in January 1997 under Section 3 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, on directions of the Supreme Court of India, and vested with responsibility for regulation and control of groundwater development and management nationwide.

The CGWA was granted powers to regulate and control groundwater, issue binding directions, and take enforcement action under the Environment (Protection) Act. Crucially, it was authorised to declare certain areas as notified areas – zones where extraction is subject to stricter controls and where No Objection Certificates (NOCs) are mandatory before any groundwater withdrawal can take place. The CGWA currently operates in 20 states and Union Territories where states lack their own regulatory authority.

Under the 2020 guidelines (amended in 2023), NOC requirements cover industries, infrastructure projects, and mining operations. As of now, 21 states and Union Territories have adopted and implemented Model groundwater legislation with modifications suited to their local needs.

The public trust doctrine: groundwater as a common resource 🔗

The most significant conceptual shift in Indian groundwater law has been the gradual recognition of groundwater as a public trust resource rather than private property. This doctrine – borrowed from environmental jurisprudence – holds that certain natural resources belong to the public at large and must be held and managed by the state as a trustee for current and future generations.

A 2004 Supreme Court judgment highlighted the public trust doctrine and directed government institutions to safeguard and ensure public access to groundwater. Some state courts went further: in the Plachimada case, the Kerala High Court addressed the limits of private extraction rights in the context of community impact. Court verdicts in various states have held that deep underground water is the property of the state under the public trust doctrine, limiting what landowners can claim as a private entitlement.

The Uttar Pradesh Ground Water (Management and Regulation) Act, 2019, reflects this shift at the state level. It recognises groundwater as a common pool resource after the Supreme Court extended the public trust doctrine to groundwater, rendering private property rights in the resource legally incongruous.

The crisis of over-extraction and pollution 🔗

The urgency behind these regulatory changes is not merely legal – it is ecological. As per the 2021 CAG report, groundwater extraction in India increased from 58% to 63% between 2004 and 2017, exceeding the recharge rate. CGWB assessments show that many regions are already overexploited, with a large number classified as critical or semi-critical. If current trends continue, nearly 60% of India’s aquifers could become critical and approximately 80% of drinking water sources could be threatened within two decades.

Pollution compounds the problem. Contamination of groundwater – from industrial effluents, agricultural runoff, and poor sanitation – lacks uniform regulatory guidelines. Contamination cases are largely addressed through court proceedings applying the polluter pays principle, rather than through a preventive legislative framework. A study in Rajasthan found that 76% of water samples contained contaminants such as fluoride and uranium, exceeding WHO-prescribed limits.

Enforcement also remains weak. The 2021 CAG audit found that a large number of industries and infrastructure projects were extracting groundwater without obtaining any NOC from the CGWA or State Groundwater Authorities, even in notified and over-exploited areas.

The Model Groundwater (Sustainable Management) Bill, 2017 🔗

The most recent legislative attempt to overhaul groundwater governance is the Model Groundwater (Sustainable Management) Bill, 2017, drafted by the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation. This Bill was circulated to states as a new template to replace the outdated 1970 model.

The 2017 Bill integrates legal developments from recent decades, including the decentralisation reforms of the 1990s, the recognition of the right to water under Article 21, and the public trust doctrine. Key features include:

• Recognition of the fundamental right to safe drinking water, linking groundwater access to Article 21 of the Constitution.
• Public trust doctrine formally incorporated, treating groundwater as a commons held by the state in trust for the people.
• Decentralisation of regulation, with roles assigned to local bodies in line with the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, so that governance is closer to the resource being managed.
• Groundwater protection zones demarcated around aquifers and public drinking water sources.
• Environmental principles embedded in the framework – including the precautionary principle, the prevention principle, and the polluter pays principle.
• Monitoring committees and groundwater security plans at the Gram Panchayat level.

Despite these strengths, the Bill has been criticised for not going far enough. It fails to fully delink land ownership from groundwater rights, meaning that landless individuals still have no clear right to groundwater access. It also lacks strong enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance, and does not adequately address the relationship between surface water and groundwater, which hydrogeologists consider inseparable.

The role of the Central Ground Water Board today 🔗

The Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) remains the technical backbone of India’s groundwater governance. It is the apex national agency responsible for management, assessment, monitoring, and regulation of groundwater at the national level, functioning under the Ministry of Jal Shakti. Its responsibilities include national-level groundwater assessment, aquifer mapping, artificial recharge programmes, and technical support to state authorities.

On the community side, the Atal Bhujal Yojana (Atal Jal), a ₹6,000 crore Central Sector Scheme, represents an important step toward participatory groundwater management. The scheme involves community-based planning, monitoring, and management of groundwater in water-stressed Gram Panchayats across seven states: Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. It is the first scheme of its kind to involve communities directly in groundwater governance at the Panchayat level.

However, the CGWB’s monitoring capacity remains stretched. Only one CGWB monitoring unit is available for every 100 to 150 square kilometres of land area – a significant gap given the scale of extraction happening across the country.

The gap between law and reality 🔗

India’s groundwater law presents a recurring pattern: progressive legislation on paper, weak enforcement on the ground. Water is constitutionally a State subject under Entry 17 of the State List, meaning that groundwater regulation ultimately falls within state jurisdiction. India’s legal framework for groundwater governance is complex and multi-layered, with constitutional and statutory provisions of both Central and state governments operating simultaneously. This fragmentation leads to coordination failures, understaffed regulatory bodies, and a tendency to prioritise socio-political interests over sound aquifer management.

The groundwater-landownership nexus remains the principal obstacle to effective regulation. Until the law formally and completely separates the right to extract groundwater from the ownership of land above it, millions of landless people will continue to be excluded from a resource that is already under severe stress – and those with land will continue to extract with little accountability.

What do you think? Given that water is a State subject under the Indian Constitution, should there be a mandatory central law that uniformly governs groundwater rights across all states – or does decentralisation to Panchayats offer a more effective path to sustainable aquifer management? And with the Indian Easements Act, 1882 still technically in force, how long can India afford to let a 19th-century colonial law determine who has rights over one of its most critical natural resources?

References

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