Opp slams Mann: ‘Under pressure from Kejriwal, surrendering authority to PM’

However, reacting to Mann’s statement where he suggested to take up the matter with the PM, Warring said, “It amounts to surrendering your authority to someone else”. Warring asked the CM “for what purpose he wanted to approach the PM. Suppose the PM asks you to share our water with Haryana, will you do that?”

Leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa said, “The PM has no authority to decide on sharing of river waters.”

Besides, in both Haryana and at the Center, the BJP is the ruling party and it can decide on its own over sharing the river waters from Yamuna and Ganges. Why was Mann eager to resolve the issue on behalf of Haryana? It appears as if Mann was under pressure from his political mentor Arvind Kejriwal who wanted him to go soft on the issue.”

He added that the Mann government’s stance was “not only weak but also lacked clarity and conviction”.

Bajwa said Mann didn’t mention even once that river water was a state subject and both the Supreme Court and the Centre had no constitutional and legal right to arbitrarily decide on the distribution of river waters.

SAD chief Sukhbir Badal added that “Punjab had an inalienable and exclusive right over its river waters as per the nationally and internationally accepted Riparian Principle and that Mann should have stressed this instead of awarding Haryana the status of an equal partner and initiating negotiations on the SYL canal.”

In a statement, Badal said that it is shocking that Mann fell into Haryana’s trap by initiating talks. “This was done despite the fact that Haryana did not have any locus standi in the case being a non-riparian state. Mann also did not take into consideration that if Punjab and Haryana’s [water] availability is less, it will result in a proportionate cut in everyone’s share but not stop the flow of water into Haryana,” he said, adding that it seems Mann is under pressure of Kejriwal who is insisting that Punjab river waters be released to Haryana and Delhi.

Former CM Captain Amarinder Singh asked Mann “not to quote history selectively”. He added that he did not “need any certificate from Mann for his commitment towards safeguarding the interests of the nation and that of Punjab”.

Referring to Mann showing a 1981 invite about the foundation laying stone of SYL in Patiala district, when he (Amarinder) was Patiala MP and Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister, Amarinder in a written statement said, “Around 41 years have passed since then and the facts at that time were quite different from what they are now. Like he (Mann) said himself, that such agreements need to be reviewed after every 25 years depending on various factors, similarly the situation and circumstances have changed from what these were then and what these are now.”

He added that this is the reason that as CM, I enacted the Water Sharing Agreements (Repealing) Act in 2004 to secure the water of Punjab from going to neighbouring states. He added, “History is witness to my commitment towards the nation and also Punjab whether it was rejoining the Army to fight war against Pakistan or resigning from Parliament and the Congress to oppose and protest against the Operation Bluestar.”

Reacting to Mann’s statement, Punjab BJP general secretary Dr Subash Sharma said that on one hand Mann claimed that Punjab did not have any water to spare and on the other hand, he has agreed to measure the water before starting the construction of the SYL. “When we know we do not have any extra water, where is the question of measuring it again”, he asked.

He also also Mann to clarify the statement made by AAP Haryana in-charge Sushil Gupta who has been repeatedly saying that his government will take SYL water to Haryana. “We had advised Mann not to take any dictations from Delhi on this issue, but he seems to have ignored our advice,” he said.