Gurugram: As expected, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar’s meeting with his Punjab counterpart Bhagwant Mann to resolve the ticklish issue of the Sutlej Yamuna Link canal turned up inconclusive Wednesday.
Reiterating Punjab’s long-held stand on this issue, Mann said after the meeting that the state doesn’t have a “drop of water” to share with Haryana. Khattar, on the other hand, said Punjab was refusing to accept the Supreme Court’s verdict. “We will inform the apex court about Punjab’s attitude,” he told reporters in Delhi and Chandigarh. Punjab government, too, will defend the state’s interests well before the apex court, said Mann.
The key meeting Wednesday to discuss the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal was called by Union Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, with the issue listed for hearing in the Supreme Court on 19 January.
During the previous hearing on 6 September, the SC had asked chief ministers of both states to resolve the issue by holding a meeting under the aegis of the Jal Shakti Ministry. Prior to that, yet another meeting between Khattar and Mann on 14 October proved inconclusive.
Proposed in 1966, before Haryana was carved out of Punjab, the Sutlej Yamuna Link is a 211-km-long canal connecting Sutlej and Yamuna. While the 90 km stretch of the canal in Haryana was completed by 1980, the remaining 121 km stretch in Punjab remains stalled.
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Will apprise SC of Punjab’s attitude: Khattar
“No consensus could be reached in the meeting. The Supreme Court’s verdict is for construction of the SYL, but Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and his team of administrative officers were not ready to find any solution to this issue,” alleged Khattar after the meeting Wednesday.
Accusing the Punjab government of refusing to accept SC’s decision wherein the Punjab Termination of Agreement Act passed by the Punjab Assembly in 2004 was declared illegal, Khattar said Mann was still citing that same legislation to deny Haryana its share of water.
“We will apprise the Supreme Court of the attitude of Punjab. We will accept whatever the court decides on this issue,” he added.
Citing the Punjab Reorganization Act, 1966, and the Union government’s order dated 24 March 1976, Khattar said 3.5 MAF (million acre-feet) of water was allocated to Haryana out of the surplus Ravi-Beas water. However, non-completion of the SYL canal leaves Haryana with only 1.62 MAF of water, said Khattar, adding that Punjab is “illegally using” about 1.88 MAF of water from Haryana’s share by not completing the SYL canal in its region.
He went further to add that non-availability of this water has led to considerable depletion of groundwater levels in southern Haryana. Due to the non-construction of the SYL canal, farmers in Haryana have to use expensive diesel and electric tubewells to irrigate, incurring an additional burden of Rs 100-150 crore every year, said Khattar.
Nearly 10 lakh acres of land that could have been irrigated with this water is now lying unused, he claimed. The chief minister also said that owing to the non-completion of the canal, Haryana bears a loss of 42 lakh tonnes of food grains each year. “The total value of this agricultural produce is Rs 19,500 crore,” said Khattar.
Punjab can’t afford to share water: Mann
Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, however, categorically stated that his state does not have even a single drop of water to share with Haryana. “More than 78 per cent of our 150 blocks are in the extreme dark zone — where groundwater is lower than average level — due to depletion of the groundwater table, so Punjab can’t afford to share its water with any other state,” he said after the meeting with Khattar.
Mann also said that at the time the “anti-Punjab agreement” for the canal was inked, the state was getting 18.56 MAF of water which has now been reduced to 12.63 MAF. Haryana, he claimed, is getting 14.10 MAF of water from Sutlej, Yamuna, and other rivulets whereas Punjab is getting only 12.63 MAF.
Mann said that instead of Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal, the project should be now conceived as “Yamuna Sutlej Link (YSL)”. The Sutlej has already dried up and there is no question of sharing even a “single drop of water” from it, he added, suggesting instead that water from rivers Ganga and Yamuna should be supplied to Punjab through the Sutlej.
Bemoaning the fact that water agreements around the globe have a clause that the agreement will be reviewed after 25 years owing to climate change, he said the SYL agreement is the only exception without such a clause.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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