The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) alleged that the Opposition parties, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, are deliberately misleading the people of Punjab on the issue of the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal.
Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, Punjab AAP chief spokesperson Malvinder Singh Kang said the SYL was an issue related to the sentiments of the people of Punjab. The stand taken by the AAP on the matter is that the Punjab government will neither allow the SYL canal to be built nor will it give even a single additional drop of Punjab’s water to any state.
Kang lashed out at the BJP for its ambiguous stand in the matter citing the statement Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave yesterday in Rajasthan in which he said some states always fight over water. Sharing an old video of the BJP’s Punjab chief Sunil Jakhar, he said while in the Congress he used to say the matter needs to be decided by the prime minister, and not he says it should be decided by the chief minister.
“Jakhar used to say that Prime Minister Modi’s intentions were not good which is why he was procrastinating on the issue. If he wanted, he could have resolved this issue in just two days. Now that Sunil Jakhar is in the BJP why doesn’t he ask the prime minister to resolve this issue,” Kang asked.
Attacking SAD (Badal) for its stand, Kang said it would be better if party chief Sukhbir Badal remained silent on the issue because his father Prakash Singh Badal was the first to issue a notification for the acquisition of land for SYL in 1978 when he was chief minister.
The AAP leader said Badal senior as CM had issued this notification at the behest of his dear friend, former Chief Minister of Haryana, Devi Lal. “After this, Prakash Singh Badal wrote another letter to Haryana Chief Minister Devi Lal that the Haryana government should give Rs 3 crore to the Punjab government to acquire land for SYL. All of this is on record,” he added.
Kang alleged that in exchange for SYL, the Badal family took a plot for a five-star hotel in Gurgaon from the then Devi Lal government. Apart from this, the Badal family amassed wealth worth billions of rupees in Haryana through Devi Lal, he alleged.
He said the BJP and the Akali Dal are trying to break the relationship that was formed between the farmers of Punjab and Haryana during the farmers’ movement. “BJP is provoking people in Haryana and Akali Dal in Punjab on the issue of SYL,” he said.
On the Congress, he recalled that in 1980, then Congress chief minister Darbara Singh gave an affidavit in the Supreme Court that the state has no objection to giving any amount of water to Haryana and Rajasthan. “Darbara Singh had given this affidavit at the behest of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. After that, in 1982, Indira Gandhi and former Congress Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh inaugurated the construction work of SYL in Kapuri village of Patiala,” he added.