Navjot Singh Sidhu: Sutlej-Yamuna Link debate exercise in futility

Jalandhar, October 24

Senior Congress leader and former PPCC chief Navjot Singh Sidhu on Tuesday said he had no expectations from the debate on Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal that Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has convened on November 1.

Talking to mediapersons on during his visit to Nurmahal here to attend Dasehra celebrations, Sidhu said: “The debate is just a distraction to deflect public attention from other key issues. Its outcome will be the same as the answer we get when we multiply a zero with a zero.”

Asked if he had plans to attend the debate, he said: “I only go uninvited to Darbar Sahib. Without an invitation, I do not go anywhere else. I have been regularly asking the CM so many questions. I have posed as many as 250 questions to him so far.”

“I have even met him personally taking my issues and he had assured me that he would take these up. But all issues, including those on mafia raj and power purchase agreements, remain unaddressed.”

Sidhu added that the SYL issue is one topic which successive governments deliberately bring to the fore to divert attention. “If the government is so serious on waters, what is it doing on rainwater harvesting or creating recharging wells? The bottled water industry is flourishing when drinking water is badly contaminated,” he said.