Hi Hafiz,
The dependency you're using is transitively pulling driver version 2.1.5.
<dependency>
<groupId>com.datastax.cassandra</groupId>
<artifactId>cassandra-driver-core</artifactId>
<version>2.1.7.1</version>
</dependency>
(Please note: I did not test if this version remains compatible with spark connector 1.4.0-M1)
Hope that helps,
Alexandre