Badal to read new water Act to neighbours

Neither Haryana nor Rajasthan will then have any right over the water they have been getting from Punjab. It will be the sole prerogative of the Punjab Government to make an allocation. Rajashtan currently gets 11.2 million acre feet (MAF) and Haryana 7.8 MAF.

The PTAA, passed during Capt Amarinder Singh’s regime, had earned the wrath of the party high command and the Centre by annulling the previous water sharing agreements between Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. The Akalis had then been forced to support the Act but they had maintained that Section 5, which ensured supply of river water to the neighbouring states, was detrimental to Punjab. The section which said that the “supply as per the current usage by other states would be protected” thus became a legislative guarantee for flow of water from Beas and Satluj rivers to Haryana and Rajasthan.

This demolished the claim of Punjab on its river waters and went against the riparian principle, which stipulates that states through which a river did not flow have no right to its waters. Satluj and Beas do not flow through Haryana and Rajasthan. All major disputes, including the Narmada and Cauvery issues, were settled in accordance with this principle.

A special session of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha in 2004 had unanimously passed the Punjab Termination of Agreements Bill, 2004, thus “knocking down” the very basis of the Supreme Court order on construction of Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal on June 4, 2003.

The Bill had annulled the December 31, 1981 agreement between Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan signed by then chief ministers in the presence of Indira Gandhi and all other pacts relating to the water of Ravi and Beas.