Punjab, Haryana fail to reach agreement on SYL canal row

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and his Haryana counterpart Manohar Lal Khattar failed to reach an agreement on the contentious Sutlej Yamuna Link canal during a meeting here on Friday.

After the meeting at Haryana Niwas here, Mann said his state does not have any water to share and the question of completing the Punjab portion of the canal does not arise.

On the other hand, Khattar said Punjab did not agree on the construction of the canal in its territory.


"No consensus was arrived at in the meeting," he said.

Last month, the Supreme Court had nudged the two chief ministers to meet and work out an amicable solution to the SYL canal row, which has been a bone of contention between the two states for several decades.

Punjab has been maintaining that the quantum of water flowing through Ravi and Beas rivers had come down considerably, and therefore, it was seeking reassessment of the water's volume.

Haryana has been seeking completion of the canal to get its share of 3.5 million acre feet of the water, and also that Punjab should comply with the 2002 and 2004 Supreme Court orders for the completion of the canal.

Currently, the state is getting 1.62 million acre feet of the Ravi-Beas water.

After it was decided that the two ministers would meet to discuss the issue, Khattar had said his state was having full rights over the SYL water, while Mann had said Punjab's interests would be fully safeguarded in the meeting.

The Centre had on September 6 informed the Supreme Court that the Punjab government was "not cooperating" in resolving the dispute.

Then Attorney General K K Venugopal, appearing for the Centre, had told the bench that the apex court had in 2017 called for an amicable settlement and that it was trying to bring the two states on the same page through its Water Resources Ministry.

"Unfortunately, Punjab has not been cooperating," the top law officer had said.

However, the counsel for Punjab had last month told a bench headed by Justice S K Kaul that the state government was very keen to resolve the issue amicably.

The Punjab Assembly in July 2004 had enacted the Punjab Termination of Agreement Act, annulling all inter-state agreements signed by the state relating to the sharing of water from Ravi and Beas.

However, a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court, while answering the Presidential Reference on November 11, 2016, had held that the act was unconstitutional.