punjab-haryana-cms-meet-to-discuss-syl-canal-dispute

The Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana are in a meeting today, discussing the long-pending Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and his Haryana counterpart Nayab Singh Saini, along with the senior officers of both governments, are at present in a meeting — which comes after the Supreme Court directed the two states to cooperate with the Centre for an amicable solution to the decades-old dispute of the SYL canal.

 

In a recent hearing, the top court had fixed the next date of hearing in the matter for April.

 

The SYL canal was conceptualised for the effective sharing of water from the Ravi and Beas rivers between the two states. The project envisages a 214-kilometre canal, of which a 122-kilometre stretch was to be constructed in Punjab and the remaining 92 kilometres in Haryana.

 

Haryana has completed the project in its territory, but Punjab, which launched the work in 1982, shelved it.

 

With the dispute lingering on for decades, the top court on January 15, 2002, ruled in favour of Haryana in a suit filed by the state in 1996 and directed the Punjab government to construct its portion of the SYL canal.

 

 

The Punjab government has been maintaining that the state has no surplus water for others and demanding its legitimate share of the Indus waters. The Haryana government has been demanding its share of the rivers' water, which it said it was not getting due to the non-construction of the SYL canal.

 

Following Supreme Court directions, Union Jal Shakti Minister C R Patil had convened a meeting of Mann and Saini on July 9 to address the long-standing issue. Later, he convened another meeting of both the chief ministers on August 5 last year.

 

In one of the meetings, Mann had urged the Centre to utilise the Chenab River water to resolve the dispute and sought the scrapping of the SYL canal project. He had also mooted the idea of a Yamuna Sutlej Link (YSL) canal instead of the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal, stating that the Sutlej has already dried up and not a single drop of its water could be shared.