Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today sought direct intervention of the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh to get the Centre to shelve its proposal to transfer the subject of “Water” from the“State List” to the “Concurrent List”. In the separate letters addressed to the Prime Minister, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Union Water Resources Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, the Chief Minister impressed upon the Government of India to desist from the purported move before it led to further suspicion and harm adding that ‘what was required at this stage was the resolution of the Inter-State Water issues harmoniously in accordance with the nationally and internationally accepted Riparian Principle’.Referring to the media reports in a section of press about the disclosure of Centre’s insidious move for considering a proposal to transfer the subject of water in the Constitution during a press conference jointly addressed by Chidambaram, Bansal and Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Smt. Ambika Soni at Chandigarh on July 13 barely after few hours of the 27th Northern Zonal Council (NZC) meeting of Chief Ministers chaired by Chidambaram. Badal pointed out that these developments have sent a wave of alarm and anguish in the minds of the people of Punjab who were already feeling deeply aggrieved over the discrimination meted out to them on the issue of river waters. The statement made by Union Minister of Water Resources Pawan Kumar Bansal in the presence of two other Union Ministers has created an impression that it was not an off-the-cuff remark and perhaps was a well thought over decision of the central government. This came within hours of the statesman-like observation of the Union Home Minister during the Northern Zonal Council meeting that the question of river waters was an extremely sensitive and delicate issue and needed to be handled with utmost care at the highest level. In the circumstances, the latest development has suddenly vitiated the atmosphere and created avoidable apprehensions in the minds of the Riparian states in general and Punjab in particular. Badal further said that he besides other Chief Ministers also highlighted the issue of the Center usurping the powers of the states by shifting subjects from the States to the Concurrent List and from the Concurrent to the Union List in the NZC meeting in the presence of Chidambaram. Thus, its timing was all the more unfortunate as it showed that the Center had kept the Chief Ministers of the concerned States in the dark about this unfortunate move.
The Chief Minister underscored that sharing of river waters was a highly emotive issue and was one of the root causes of the grievous tragedy which Punjab and the rest of the country had to pass through during the eighties and the nineties. The wounds caused by the
consistent denial of justice to Punjab on this issue have still not healed. The statement by the Union Water Resources Minister Bansal has the potential of opening those deep emotional wounds again. Badal remarked that Punjab strongly opposed the reported proposal, with regard to both the jurisdiction of the States on the river waters and the larger issue of Centre-relations. Apart from the emotional and economic dimension of the issue, Badal reiterated that it had a bearing on the crucial question of Centre-State relations, the rights and the powers of the States and the larger question of federalism which was discussed extensively in the NZC meet at Chandigarh and during the course of his observations, he had specifically referred the issue of such transference of subjects from States List to the Concurrent List and from the Concurrent to the Union List by the Centre. This issue was not merely legalistic and has profound political constitutional implications. The balance of powers between the Centre and the states, even to the extent accepted by the States then was the result of long and exhaustive deliberations by the Founding Fathers. These deliberations underlined an acknowledgement of the federal character of the country and the need for reflecting that character in our constitution by maintaining clearly defined space for both the centre and the states. Any attempt at constricting this space further for the states could only lead to an atmosphere of avoidable suspicion, mistrust and confrontation between the Centre and the States, asserted Badal.