Punjab CM on SYL Issue: Not a Single Drop of Additional Water to Be Shared with Any State

Bhagwant Mann, the chief minister of Punjab, said on Thursday that at no cost will more water be shared with any other state.

He said that Gurminder Singh’s name has been accepted by the state cabinet for the position of advocate general.

Mann made this statement after presiding over a cabinet emergency meeting at his Chandigarh home.

The Sutlej-Yamuna-Link (SYL) canal problem was addressed by the council of ministers despite the lack of a formal agenda for the meeting.

At the cabinet meeting, Gurminder Singh’s name, according to Mann, was accepted for the position of AG.

Additionally, the SYL problem was covered at the conference. At all costs, not even a single more drop of water will be shared with any other state. It was also considered when to hold the state Assembly’s monsoon session. A number of people-friendly decisions received approval, the chief minister wrote on X.

The Supreme Court had ordered the Centre to survey the area of land in Punjab that had been designated for the building of a section of the SYL canal the day before the meeting.

On Wednesday, every major party in Punjab argued that the state lacked any more water that it could provide to another state.

Political parties in Haryana, meanwhile, hailed the Supreme Court’s directives, claiming that the state’s residents have been waiting for SYL water for a long time.

The top court ordered the Center to survey the area of land in Punjab that was designated for the building of a segment of the SYL canal and to evaluate the level of work done there during the matter’s hearing on Wednesday.

The Centre was also urged by a bench presided over by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul to vigorously continue the mediation process in an effort to settle the long-running conflict between Punjab and Haryana over the canal’s development.

The SYL canal was designed to effectively distribute water from the Beas and Ravi rivers. The proposal called for the construction of a 214 km canal, of which 122 km would be built in Punjab and the remaining 92 km in Haryana.

Punjab, which began building on the project in 1982, put it on hold when Haryana finished it in its area.