Haryana Assembly tried to 'obfuscate' issue of Chandigarh's transfer to Punjab, says Shiromani Akali Dal

Chandigarh: The Shiromani Akali Dal on Tuesday said it is unfortunate that the Haryana Assembly was trying to “obfuscate” the issue of the transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab by passing a resolution instead of demanding a separate capital for the state. The Haryana Assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution seeking the completion of the SYL Canal and the transfer of Hindi-speaking areas from Punjab while denouncing the neighbouring state for staking claim over Chandigarh. The Haryana government had summoned the one-day assembly session just days after the Punjab House passed a resolution seeking immediate transfer of Chandigarh to the Aam Aadmi Party-run state. Reacting to the resolution passed by the Haryana Assembly, senior SAD leader Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said, “All these issues have already been settled. Raking them now will only result in ill will between Punjab and Haryana.” “The Haryana Assembly should have acted responsibly and put the injustice meted out to Punjab on record on these issues besides urging the Centre to allocate funds if needed for establishment of a new capital. Doing anything else amounts to playing to the galleries,” he said in a party statement. Speaking about the issue of transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab, Cheema said, “It is a universally accepted norm that the parent state retains the capital. This was also accepted during the reorganisation of the states in 1966.” “Chandigarh was retained as the capital of Punjab and Haryana only as an ad-hoc arrangement. This was reiterated by the Rajiv-Longowal accord which even laid down a deadline of January 26, 1986 for the transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab. The same was even ratified in parliament so there can be no ambiguity on this issue at all,” he added. Speaking about the issue of SYL canal, Cheema said the first discrimination against Punjab was done in 1955 when a larger share of Ravi-Beas waters were allocated to non-riparian states by the then Congress government. He said after the reorganisation of Punjab in 1966, a provision was made for the distribution of river waters, which was challenged by the SAD government in 1979 but when the Congress government came into being and agreed under central pressure to implement the SYL canal in a time-bound manner besides withdrawing all suits in 1981. Cheema said Punjab had been consistently asserting that only it had rights over its river waters as per the riparian principle. “Besides, there is a change in water availability and we do not even have one drop of water to spare. Moreover, there is no land for the construction of the SYL canal as the same has been handed back to the farmers by the erstwhile SAD-led government,” said Cheema. Speaking about Haryana’s demand for the transfer of Hindi-speaking areas of Punjab to the state, Cheema said repeated commissions, including the Desai Commission and the Venkatramaih Commission, could not find any contagious Hindi-speaking area for transfer from Punjab to Haryana. “It is also a recorded fact that after failing to find any contagious Hindi-speaking area for transfer to Haryana, the Venkatramaih Commission went out of terms of reference,” he said. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.