E-Paper
SYL Canal row: Congress, SAD betrayed people of Punjab, says AAP
Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday said that the Congress, Shiromani Akali Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party had no intention to solve the Sutlej Yamuna Link Canal issue and their governments betrayed people of Punjab by allowing its construction for their vested interests.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday said that the Congress, Shiromani Akali Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party had no intention to solve the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal issue and their governments betrayed people of Punjab by allowing its construction for their vested interests.
AAP’s state chief spokesperson Malvinder Singh Kang said that chief minister Bhagwant Mann had made the right demand by asking the central government to construct the Yamuna Sutlej Link (YSL) instead of SYL amidst depleting water of Punjab. “Previous chief ministers, including Parkash Singh Badal and Captain Amarinder Singh, had worked clandestinely to weaken the rights of Punjab over SYL issue,” Kang alleged at a press conference here.
Kang said that when Badal was the CM in 1978, he had allowed his Haryana counterpart Devi Lal to conduct a survey for the SYL canal, besides issuing a notification for acquiring the land. He claimed that Amarinder laid the foundation stone of the SYL on the directions of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. “The AAP government would take all legal options to protect the waters of Punjab. Over 78 per cent of our 150 blocks are in extreme dark zones due to depletion of ground water table. The state cannot afford to share its water with any other state,” he added, urging the central government to sanction a special grant for the rejuvenation of the canal system in the state.
‘Establish ownership rights over river waters flowing through Punjab’ :
Congress leader and leader of opposition (LoP) Partap Singh Bajwa has called upon the Punjab government to first establish ownership rights over the river waters flowing through the state while presenting its case in the apex court.
Bajwa said that as per the riparian law established and accepted internationally all across the world including India, its various provinces and union territories, all natural resources comprising mineral deposits or river waters existing on the soil and beneath the earth belonged to the state. “There should be no ambiguity over it,” he added.
The Congress leader said that it was imperative for the Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government to first establish in the highest court of the law that Punjab had the first ownership rights over the river waters flowing on and through its soil and Haryana had no riparian rights over the Punjab waters. “Whether we do not have a single drop of water to spare is a secondary issue. Besides it is a well-known fact established by the experts that Punjab’s water table has already gone down drastically due to excessive use of groundwater. As a result, Punjab is already grappling with the shortage of water and hence cannot spare water for the other states”, he said in a statement.
Bajwa said Haryana, the central government or even the apex court could not force Punjab to construct the Sutlej Yamuna Canal (SYL) as it would be completely unconstitutional. “Successive governments at the Centre betrayed the interests of Punjab and the time has come to claim its rights over its natural resources,” he said.
