CHANDIGARH, Punjab—The Haryana government has termed the Punjab government’s move to file a suit in the Supreme Court in relation to sharing of its river water as a tactic of delaying the decision in the matter in favour of Haryana.
In the suit, Punjab has sought the constitution of a tribunal for re-allocation of the Ravi-Beas water and adjudication of the question of whether Haryana and Rajasthan are riparian states or not.
An official spokesperson of Haryana said that following the decision of Supreme Court in the Mullaperiyar case, it is a settled law that unilateral cessation of earlier agreements on water related issues for inter-state rivers was legally untenable.
He said that Haryana has already decided to file a suit in the Supreme Court to challenge the unilateral scrapping of the tripartite water settlement of 1974. The state government has decided to mention the matter before the Supreme Court for an early hearing and adjudication on the matter of the Presidential reference of 2004 on the related issue, in which no hearing has taken place after 2005, the spokesperson said.
It is worth mention that with the intervention of India’s union government, Punjab’s neighboring states i.e. Haryana, Rajasthan etc. have been looting the most important natural resource of the Punjab, violating the international and national laws related to sharing of water despite the deep shortage of water that prevails here.
