There was an immediate political fallout of the Supreme Court order scrapping the Punjab law against water sharing with other states and asking it to share water, with PCC President Amarinder Singh and Congress MLAs resigning from the Lok Sabha and the state Assembly, respectively.
Minutes after the Supreme Court announced its verdict on the vexed Sutlej Yamuna Link issue, Amarinder resigned from his Lok Sabha seat in protest. He said he was doing so to protest against the “injustice meted out to the people of the state.”
Amarinder has sent his resignation to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and has also sought a personal meeting next week. In his resignation, the Punjab PCC chief said he had decided to quit as a member of the 16th Lok Sabha from Amritsar constituency in Punjab with immediate effect “as a mark of protest against the deprivation of the people of my state of the much-needed Sutlej river water.”
“Have resigned from the Lok Sabha in protest of the SC verdict on SYL. The entire CLP stands with me as we continue our fight for Punjab,” he tweeted.
In the letter, he attacked the Modi government at the Centre and the Akali-BJP government in the state, saying both “failed to save them from the sorry plight into which they have been plunged by the apex court judgment.”
He said it was his moral duty in the present circumstances to extend my solidarity to the people of Punjab and join them in their fight for justice.
Amarinder’s strong and prompt reaction has to be seen in the backdrop of the fact that the SC verdict has come bang in the middle of campaigning for the upcoming Assembly elections in Punjab. The SYL has been an emotive issue for both Punjab and Haryana, with the two states having fought bitterly over it for years.
Meanwhile, in an evidence of how the issue divides the people of Punjab and Haryana, including the Congressmen from the two states, Randeep Surjewala, who is a prominent Haryana Congress leader and AICC Communications Department in-charge, tweeted cheering the court order. Surjewala said the SC verdict has put a stamp of Haryana’s rights on the SYL. The struggle of the farmer has yielded results, he added.