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Punjab AG had appeared against state in SYL case
Saurabh Malik/TNS

Chandigarh, October 20
Astounding, but true. The Punjab government has chosen to appoint as Advocate-General a senior advocate who had appeared against the state in the Satluj-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal case.

Investigations carried out by The Tribune revealed that the now Advocate-General, Ashok Kumar Aggarwal, had appeared before the Supreme Court in the SYL case in 2004, when he was the Advocate-General of Haryana.

The case, State of Haryana versus State of Punjab and another; and the State of Punjab versus State of Haryana and others, has been reported in Judgments Today (JT 2004 [5] SC 72). The judgment by Justice Ruma Pal and Justice Venkatarama Reddi, dated June 4, 2004, clearly marks the presence of Aggarwal, the Advocate-General of Haryana, along with other advocates.

Legally speaking, there may be nothing wrong in the appointment of Aggarwal as the Punjab Advocate-General, but his appointment apparently has larger political and social ramifications as the SYL issue has always been considered central to the dispute between the two states for decades.

A peep into the turbulent past of Punjab is enough to reveal that SYL was nothing less than an emotional issue in the state. Even now, there can be no doubt that the militants cited SYL as a “discriminatory factor” against the Centre to mobilise people during the dark days of militancy.

Available information suggests that the two states have been at loggerheads on the issue of water sharing ever since Haryana was carved out of Punjab in 1966. As both states have a strong agrarian economic base, sharing river water has led to the widening of fissures between them.

The controversy is still in its high tide. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, considered instrumental in Aggarwal’s appointment, had earlier this year announced in the state assembly that his government would not share “even a single drop” of water with other states. Retorting, Hooda had made it clear they would not allow anybody to deprive them of their right to having waters of the Ravi and the Beas. The Supreme Court, on June 4, 2004, had directed the Centre to complete the construction of the Punjab stretch of the SYL canal at the earliest.

The Bench gave the direction while allowing the application filed by the Haryana government, seeking a direction to the Centre to construct the unfinished SYL canal.