The war of words of over the Supreme Court (SC) directive for survey of the land allocated for construction of part of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal continued on Thursday with the ruling Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) remark that the Shiromani Akali Dal Badal (SAD) is indulging in a drama over the issue.
Reacting sharply to the remark, The SAD accused Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann of “teaming up with the Congress party to facilitate successful conduct of a Central survey to release Ravi-Beas water to Haryana through the SYL canal”.
Addressing a press conference, AAP’s Punjab chief spokesperson Malvinder Singh Kang said the SAD (Badal) was playing to the gallery when they won’t allow the construction of the SYL canal.
He called it an irony that on 20 February 1978 then chief minister of Punjab and SAD leader, Parkash Singh Badal, was notified to acquire land for the SYL under the Land Acquisition Act Section 4. “His (Badal’s) Haryana counterpart Chaudhary Devi Lal had sung paeans about his friendship with Badal and said thanks to the friendship he could convince Parkash Singh Badal to notify land acquisition (for SYL),” Kang said.
The AAP leader said the Badal family did so for personal benefits. “The Balasar farm house and Gurgaon five-star hotel are the result of that deal,” he alleged.
In a counter to the allegation, SAD leader Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said the AAP government seemed to have forgotten all the historic injustices meted out to Punjab by the Congress, from giving away half of its river waters to Rajasthan in 1955 to further division of another half of the remaining water to Haryana and the decision to create and inaugurate digging of the SYL in 1981 and 1982, respectively.
Dr. Cheema decried the AAP for using a one-page document of former Haryana chief minister Devi Lal’s speech in the Assembly to defame the SAD. He said the speech, which was delivered for the consumption of Haryana legislators, only talks about the Punjab government’s intention to acquire land in three villages under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act.
“The AAP Government has forgotten that the SYL was built over a 122 kilometer span and that administrative approval for the same was given by then Punjab chief minister Giani Zail Singh (Congress) in 1977 and Rs one crore was also received by the Zail Singh government from Haryana during this period,” he added.
Advising the AAP Government not to indulge in politics on such a sensitive issue, Dr. Cheema said the Kejriwal party was actually stands for the construction of the SYL canal and release of Punjab’s waters to Haryana.