She said drinking water supply should get preference over water for irrigation purposes. Not satisfied with flow of drinking water from both Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, she said they were not giving any assured supply of water but were only carrying water to Delhi.

"It is a like a bad dream which keeps on recurring again and again," she remarked. Mrs Sheila Dixit also wanted northern states to come out with a common programme on handling the ever-growing volume of solid waste and garbage.

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh blamed certain mandarins in the Union Ministry of Power for litigations started by certain central public sector undertakings against his government. He said such litigations were not appreciated by his government. He wanted that though Himachal was surplus in power generation and supply, any such disputes needed to be resolved at the earliest.

He also wanted to go slow on unbundling of power boards. "In regard to generation, our hydro development policy provides sufficient space for private sector participation, public private partnership and centre-state and inter-state endeavour”.

Talking about inter-state water sharing, he said, it would be possible if the contentious issues of the past were expeditiously resolved. "Needless to say, it is necessary to evolve consensus among states on such issues so that the gains from the early implementation could be shared and such gains add to the national economy," he said.

Mr Virbhadra Singh was also not happy over the manner in which the work on completion of the Baddi-Chandigarh road and the Chandigarh-Siswan-Baddi were being taken up by neighbouring states. In several years, if small stretches of 30 km and 23 km could not be completed, how the inter-state barriers could go, he asked.

Not far behind in criticism was Haryana Education Minister P.C. Mullana, who read out the speech of his Chief Minister. He said:” The "unfortunate water dispute regarding the share of Haryana in Ravi-Beas waters needs to be resolved without further delay. This would lead to irrigation of 3 lakh hectares of land and production of eight lakh tones of foodgrains annually”.

Punjab Finance Minister Surinder Singla, who represented Capt Amarinder Singh at the technical session, held that the conclave was to reach consensus on the three-point agenda and there was no idea of using this forum for raising contagious issues like river waters. "I could also use this forum to say that Punjab has no surplus water," he remarked.

Mr Singla held that if the northern states were witnessing slower growth rate in industry, it was primarily because of lesser exports from the region. All major export units were either in West or South. The potential of Punjab, he said, was in agriculture and industry. He wondered how come hill states with abundance of hydel potential, horticulture and natural resources, were encouraging pharmaceutical industry to be established there.

The Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad, and the Administrator of Chandigarh, Gen SF Rodriguez, also presented their cases on removal of inter-state barriers, e-governance and sharing of water and power among northern states.