Punjab Assembly Passes Resolution Against Sharing Waters with Haryana

CHANDIGARH, Punjab—During a highly confrontational Vidhan Sabha session yesterday, March 10, a resolution was passed against sharing waters with Haryana and other neighboring states.  The resolution was moved by the Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Badal himself, who stated that “Punjab did not have even a single drop of water to give to anyone”.

Chief Minister said that “Punjab was an agrarian state and sharing more waters with other states will lead to unforeseen circumstances”.

Badal stated that despite river waters, 73 per cent of the state’s water was coming from tubewells,which was causing depletion of waters in the grounds.  The assembly had to be adjourned twice, before the resolution was passed in absence of Congress MLAs.  Badal stated that the State Government would return the land it had acquired for the construction.

Senior Punjab BJP leader Madan Mohan Mittal hailed this decision as “historic” and endorsed it, while Haryana Chief Minister and also senior BJP leader, Manohar Lal Khattar, denounced it.  He called Badal’s resolution as “politically motivated”.

Bhai Mohkam Singh Alleges Deep Rooted Controversy

File Photo: Bhai Mohkam Singh
File Photo: Bhai Mohkam Singh

Chief organizer of Sarbat Khalsa 2015 and president of United Akali Dal, Bhai Mohkam Singh had earlier claimed that the Akali Dal and BJP government were playing politics on the issue of river waters of punjab. He asked how both parties with varying interests could work together on the issue.

Bhai Mohkam Singh alleged that it was not a co-incidence that the waters issue was brought to the fore by the Centre Government to divert attention from the violent incidents that took place in Haryana.  “Now that the waters agreement is again in the media, no one is talking about Jat rights in Haryana which caused so much damage,” Bhai Mohkam Singh told Sikh24.

Bhai Mohkam Singh alleged that the “Akali Dal underwent a secret deal with BJP led Union government”.

12 COMMENTS

  1. Yeah so the answer is

    All the water in nation be pooled together along with the Ocean waters so that this basic ingredient of life is available to all the citizen of India .

    We need to reunify Punjab ,Haryana ,HP and Jammu .
    Enough of this identity politics .
    Time to change tracks

    • No, Punjab keeps its natural resources as it NEEDS them to survive. You build canals and desalination plants for Haryana, UP and Jammu from the sea – you use the crores being wasted on useless space programmes. As for ‘reunification’ (which you only want as a cynical ploy to avoid the illegality of stealing the water in the first place and emasculating Sikh electorate) have you really though through what holding referendums in Jammu and Punjab about self determination would actually lead to? Or are you just proposing that Sikhs in Punjab just don’t get a say and have to be forced into marriage with Haryana (which left Punjab’s house over FIFTY years ago with their own referendum) and HP?

    • Sure lets reunify Punjab and Haryana in order to give the people in Haryana all the legal cover they need to continue bleeding Punjab dry. That really makes sense to the Punjabis and appeals to your sense that law entitles the state to decree any illegal and immoral action. And of course that would also have the great side effect of saying that Sikhs are no longer the majority electorate so their grievances can be ignored even more. Why don;t you hold referendum in Punjab to see if they want to be ‘reunified’ with Haryana? Once the groom has left the bride why should she accept him back into her home after 50 years absence only when he needs taking care of? Build your canal from Indian ocean and desalinate the water – the Punjab Sikh homeland cannot continue to commit suicide for others.

    • Punjab has already done all the giving and Haryana has done all the taking and we are now at this point where enough is enough. Punjab is a riparian state and is larger in size than Haryana which is not a riparian state and smaller in size but takes more water than Punjab gets from its own rivers which are essentially Punjab’s primary resource – the state is called Punj-Ab (land of five rivers). Invest Central Government Space programme money in building desalination plants and pipework and canals from Indian ocean to Haryana and Rajasthan (desert state). Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King were both dissidents (in Mandela’s instance he was also a convicted terrorist who spent decades in prison for his political crimes) that opposed the state sanctioned Status Quo and wanted freedom for their people – the brutally but lawfully oppressed and exploited black populations of South Africa and America repressed respectively by countrymen who thought of themselves as being their natural superiors. Still want to use them as role models when you talk of the Sikh homeland of Punjab?

    • Deeply cynical plan to dilute power of Sikhs by then saying Sikhs in Punjab are no longer the majority even within their own homeland. Plus of course you create a legal technicality to get around the abuse of riparian law by saying ‘hey, look we are no longer diverting water from Punjab it is just being relocated within greater Punjab’. The Sikh homeland of Punjab would still be bereft of its water leading to further degradation of Sikh farmers lands. Also within this suddenly proposed ‘reunification’ what is going to be the language of PUnjab – is it still going to be Punjabi (which Punjabi Hindus abandoned to make Haryana in 1966) or will you make Hindi the language? Perhaps you will change the name of Punjab as well – after all by the time you are done with it won’t be land of five rivers but rather land of a couple of canals. You are not sharing water when you are diverting it away from Punjab’s farmlands rendering them useless after thousands of years to lands which do not naturally have rich farmland. The Punjab was breadbasket of India for decades and we can continue to feed the rest of India only if we keep our own resources which are essential to health and economy of our land. You think Modi would allow Gujrat to give up its precious natural resources to anyone?

    • There is a misconception that Punjab has abundant river water which is totally false and one you continue to peddle. Even though you obsessed with ridiculous space travel it isn’t rocket science but simple maths and common sense to understand. ‘The rivers of Punjab have a total of 28.5 M. A. F. water. Rajasthan takes away 11.2 M.A.F. of the Punjab river waters (8.6 M.A.F. through the Rajasthan Canal, 1.5 M.A.F. through the Bhakra Canal and 1.1 M.A.F. through the Bikaner Canal). And, Haryana has been allotted 7.83 M.A.F. (4.33 M.A.F. goes from the Satluj through the Bhakra Canal. Besides this, 1.62 M.A.F. out of 3.5 M.A.F. alloted from the Ravi-Beas system also runs through the Bhakra canal. The remaining 1.88 M.A.F. is a bone of contention. (Over and above this, Haryana takes 5.6 M.A.F. from the Yamuna and also uses the entire 1.1 M.A.F. water of the Ghaggar.) Punjab is left with 9.47 M.A.F. Most people do not know that Haryana gets more water than Punjab, although it has less area than Punjab. (Punjab has 50362 sq. kilo metres of area while Haryana has 44212 sq.kilo metres.) It may also be pointed out that according to Helsinky Rules 1966 and the Indian Constitution (Entry 17 of List ii under Seventh Schedule), Punjab, as the riparian state, is entitled to the entire water of its rivers.’

    • ‘European Unification’ were ideals held by Napoleon and Hitler. If you are talking about ‘ever closer political union’ that is not agreed to by everyone in Europe (The UK has just recently made it clear that they will NEVER accept this and will hold a referendum in July to ask their people whether they wish to leave the European Union which badly needs reform because it is bypassing the democratic sovereignty of member states) and you can see the strain with both the Euro (Greek bailouts which would lead to domino effect of Italy and Portugal falling out of monetary union) and the asylum seeker migration issue which has led to the closed borders and a serious suggestion that the Schengen Agreement (which abolished the EU’s internal borders other than for countries which opted out such as the UK) will have to be abandoned. In truth only one state in European union does all the big decisions and that happens to be Germany (so they got their way even without Hitler) clearly demonstrating what happens to the smaller partners in such unions and which would happen to Sikh homeland of Punjab if it were wrestled into submission by neighbouring Hindu majority States. As for killing our language well it is well known that for you to take away a people’s identity you need to get rid of the indigenous language – ask the Scots, the Welsh and Irish about what happened to their native tongues of Gaelic. There is nothing ‘extremist’ about wanting to protect your won language and I bitterly resent you stating that such an aspiration is somehow extremist as it is essential to one’s identity and in the case of Sikhs you are talking about a religious language with Gurmukhi in which Guru Granth Sahib Ji is written. No doubt you would prefer all the Saroops to be only in Hindi then you could slip ‘truth’ of ramayana into them too. Under NO circumstances are you going to divide Sikh homeland of Punjab any further or renaming it nor are you going to emasculate it by conjoining it with peoples of other States to give them a veto over Sikh affairs. As for German reunification you do know that was between East Germany and West Germany reuniting Germanic peoples? The analogue now would be to reunite Punjabis from Pakistani East Punjab and Indian West PUnjab. Do you want to do that? Didn’t think so. The best thing to do then is to leave the Sikhs alone and stop pernicious and cynical interference in their internal affairs. Only an idiot pulls at the mane of a sleeping lion.

    • Also as you are not a Sikh ironically you may not be aware that when you say ‘Answer is Reunification of all three states and may be even Jammu’ you are going a long way to reconstitute the territories of Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s ‘Khalsa Raj’. Reviving memories and public awareness of his Sikh Empire will make it harder for the Hinduvta agenda to dilute and adulterate Sikh identity which draws a lot of its strength from its history as well as spiritual faith. So let’s reunify as you want and therefore reconstitute the Khalsa Raj with the Sikhs ruling as they did when they last owned all these lands under the Sikh Empire when both Hindus and Muslims were very content to live under Sikh auspices as we have a clear historical precedent set by Maharajah Ranjit SIngh who was both a pious Sikh and a secular minded Sovereign as the two characteristics go together. Sikhs are not going to be ruled in their own homeland by non Sikhs and that includes the likes of Badal and anyone else who wears a turban and beard but abandons Sikh principles.
      Also the constituent parts of Great Britain are separate countries – Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England – which have their own national assemblies as well as a UK Parliament. Those assemblies have the power to set their own laws as can clearly be seen in Scotland which even has a Scottish Pound and education system and recently enjoyed a referendum to stay or leave the union. Still want the Sikhs in Punjab to enjoy such liberalism and freedom to express their identity? Didn’t think so.

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