Water dispute: Delhi BJP seeks LG's help to stop Punjab's ‘injustice'
New Delhi: On a day when Punjab and Haryana High Court took exception to the water dispute between Punjab and Haryana, the Delhi BJP met Lieutenant Governor V.K. Saxena and submitted a memorandum regarding the artificial water crisis allegedly being imposed on the people of Delhi by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government of Bhagwant Singh Mann.
Delhi BJP President Virendra Sachdeva and Delhi MPs Manoj Tiwari, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, Yogendra Chandolia, Kamaljeet Sehrawat, Praveen Khandelwal, and Bansuri Swaraj met the LG and sought immediate intervention to prevent the city's taps from going dry due to reduced raw water supply coming to Delhi.
The memorandum stated that the AAP government in Punjab has announced a cut in water supply from the Bhakra Canal flowing into Haryana, thereby imposing an artificial water shortage on Delhi.
Earlier, remarking on Punjab's alleged move to cut water supply to Haryana, the HC said while India has decided to take such tough measures – of stopping river waters – against Pakistan, the states within the country should not be doing the same against each other.
'We are doing this to our enemy country. Let us not do this within our states," said the High Court, referring to suspension of Indus Waters Treaty by India to stop river waters flowing into Pakistan in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack.
The verbal war in Delhi over river water sharing escalated during the day when Delhi Water Minister Parvesh Verma accused AAP leader and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of punishing Delhiites for his party's electoral defeat by asking his party's Punjab government to restrict water supply to Haryana and Delhi.
His remarks evoked a sharp response from AAP leader and former Delhi CM Atishi who asked Verma to resign if he was unable to provide water to people despite being in office for two months.
'Delhi gets water from the Yamuna and the Ganga and none of these two rivers flow through Punjab. So, there is no question of accusing Punjab of stopping Delhi's water supply,' she said.
Earlier, the Delhi BJP memorandum given to the LG professed that there was no shortage of water in the Bhakra Dam Canal yet, for politically motivated reasons, the AAP government in Punjab had announced a major reduction in water supply from the canal.
--IANS
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