Punjab CM Amarinder Singh likely to meet PM over Sutlej Canal issue

Team Udayavani, Apr 20, 2017, 8:15 AM IST

New Delhi: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh is likely to seek the Centre’s intervention in the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue during a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi today. According to sources, Mr Singh is in the national capital and will meet the Prime Minister today on Punjab’s stand on the issue and is likely seek the Centre’s intervention in the matter. On March 2, in a stern message to Punjab, the top court had said its verdict allowing construction of the SYL canal in Haryana and Punjab has to be implemented.

Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had on April 10 told the Supreme Court that a meeting has been called on April 20 by the Centre and it has invited Punjab and Haryana to resolve the decades-old contentious SYL canal issue.

The controversial 1981 water-sharing agreement came into being after Haryana was carved out of Punjab in 1966.

Sources say, the Chief Minister may also talk to PM Modi about the issue of possible revival of militancy in Punjab and Pakistan seeking to create disturbance in the border state.

In February this year, Mr Singh had warned of “resurgence of militancy in Punjab”, if the Sutlej Yamuna link canal was built without factoring in the realities of old “Naxalite and Khalistani belt” of the state’s southern part. Prior to elections in the state, he had then claimed that with an estimated 10 lakh acres of land in southern Punjab expected to go dry as a result of SYL, the 6 lakh odd people of the region, which has a “history of militancy and extremism”, would be “forced to resort to violence to feed their children.”