BJP ministers: Chautalas vitiating atmosphere

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 21

Two days before the scheduled digging of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal by the INLD, the ruling BJP took on the party supremo Om Prakash Chautala for vitiating the atmosphere of the state by inciting people to undertake digging of the canal.

“The INLD leaders, under the guidance of Chautala who is serving a 10-year jail term in teachers’ recruitment scam and is out on parole, are going around the state and inciting people to undertake digging in the name of strengthening social ties,” alleged BJP ministers Krishan Kumar and Nayab Singh Saini here today.

Taking potshots at personal ties of Chautala and Badal families, the ministers stressed on how the two families were “colluding to weaken the stand of Haryana regarding the SYL canal in the Supreme Court.”

Close on the heels of a series of attacks by Leader of the Opposition Abhay Chautala on the BJP Government’s ‘weak stand’ on the issue, the Khattar government seems to have fielded two ministers to blunt the Opposition’s attack.

The ministers asserted that all facts in the matter were in favour of the state and the Supreme Court had directed Punjab to release water to Haryana. However, the INLD was hindering the legal process by inciting people of the state to violate the law, thus weakening Haryana’s stand in the apex court.

The tug-of-war between the BJP and the INLD on the SYL issue is seen as attempts by two parties to score brownie points in the run-up to the Budget Session beginning February 27. The BJP and the INLD, which earlier teamed up to embarrass the Congress both inside and outside the Haryana Assembly, now seemed to have fallen out on a variety of issues.