A joint meeting of Punjab’s top political leaders, on Saturday, decided to seek Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s intervention to help resolve a fresh row with neighbouring Haryana over the apportioning of water resources.
The long-pending inter-state dispute was recently renewed when Punjab’s chief minister Mr Parkash Singh Badal demanded that non-riparian states utilising water from the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej must pay royalties to Punjab. This was immediately met with angry retorts from Haryana’s Bhupinder Singh Hooda who insisted that royalties could only be sought on produce and not naturally occurring water resources.
Evidently intended to raise the rhetoric ahead of July 4, when the Supreme Court is slated to take up a presidential reference on Punjab’s Termination of Agreements Act, 2004, Friday’s all party meeting in Chandigarh was attended by all major political parties including the Opposition Congress.
Mr Badal told reporters all parties had unanimously resolved to approach the Prime Minister in order to save Punjab’s water resources. “Our own water table is going down rapidly and we do not have any water to share with other states,” he said, adding the centre must intervene failing which Punjab’s agricultural sector, which contributes nearly 50 per cent of the national food grain pool, could be in peril.
The resolution at the all-party reference makes no reference to Mr Badal’s demand for water royalties. Congress legislature party chief Rajinder Kaur Bhattal said her party would support any initiative to prevent any further depletion of Punjab’s river waters.
Former chief minister Capt. Amarinder Singh, who is widely championed for legislating the Termination of Agreements Act in July 2004, said, “the state government must concentrate on ensuring legal safeguards through the best possible legal representation in the Supreme Court.”