Water-sharing dispute: MLA Jakhar counters AAP protest

State BJP chief Sunil Jakhar’s nephew and MLA, Sandeep Jakhar, and his supporters on Thursday countered AAP activists, who reached his family’s Subhash Nagar residence here, intending to gherao the house over water dispute with Haryana.

The AAP activists assembled at Canal Colony and walked via the college road to reach Jakhar’s house. Sandeep Jakhar and dozens of his supporters were waiting outside for the protesters. When the protesters, led by Punjab Agro Industries Corp chairman and state AAP spokesperson Shaminder Singh Khinda,reached the spot, the MLA came out carrying bottles filled with contaminated canal water. He asked the AAP leaders why the government had not been able to control water contamination in the past three years.

“Why could they not ensure clean drinking water for locals and canal water for the irrigation of crops in fields and orchards that had forced many farmers to uproot their fruit orchards?” he asked the activists.

When Khinda questioned Jakhar whom he was representing, the latter said he represented his uncle, Sunil Jakhar, who had categorically announced on several occasions that Punjab had no surplus water for other states.

The MLA displayed newspaper clippings of April 19, 2022, when AAP Rajya Sabha member Sushil Gupta’s statement was carried, wherein he had said that water from the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal would reach Haryana's fields if his party came to power in the state.

AAP’s then Haryana Affairs in-charge Gupta had also said, “In 2025, water will reach every field in Haryana. This is not our promise, but our guarantee.” When asked if he meant the SYL Canal waters too, Gupta replied in the affirmative.

Jakhar accused the AAP of trying to cover its leaders’ misdeeds and failures at the ground level.