Badal's statement on river waters is politically motivated:Hooda

New Delhi, Mar 6 (UNI) The dormant issue of distribution of river waters between Punjab and Haryana has again come up with Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal stating that related legislation be amended to claim more share for the state while his counterpart Bhupendra Singh Hooda today asserted that his state would get its due share' at every cost.

"Mr Badal's statement on the river waters is politically motivated and aimed at getting cheap publicity as Haryana does not beg for waters but entitles to get its share as part of Indus Treaty signed between India and Pakistan in the 1950s", said Mr Hooda while addressing a meet-the-press, organised by the Press Club of India here this evening.

Mr Hooda said the every drop of river waters should a national proporty and river waters should be put on the Concurrent List of the constitution.

On the other hand, Akali Dal(Badal), won the recent assembly elections in Punjab with its manifesto proclaiming that his government would amend the section five of the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act (PTAA), 2004 which preserves 'as it' the shares of the waters drawn by Haryana and Rajasthan in 2004. It implies that Mr Badal has questioned the share of river waters being drawn by Haryana and Rajasthan as over the amount they are entitled to.

The Akalis already challenged the exclusion of Punjab from share of Yamuna waters and have been maintaining water of the river be counted together with Ravi and Beas waters before adjudicating quamtum of waters between the neighbouring states.

Opposing ther Akalis stand, Mr Hooda also maintained that Haryana was a riperian state as far as Ravi and Beas waters were concerned because 60 per cent of his states shares the Indus rivers' basin.

The PTTA, 2004 piloted by former Punjab Chief Minister Amrinder Singh was enacted by the state assembly in full agreement with Akali MLAs to obviate Supreme Court's possible directions for releasing more waters for Haryana's incomplete Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal.

Mr Hooda claimed that his state topped others in per capita income and had enhanced minimum monthly wage to Rs 3510 while West Bengal's figure is only Rs 966.

In Haryana now, private schools have to observe official laid norms regarding buildings, playgrounds and curriculum and have to pay atleast the minimum monthly wage laid down by his government, he added.

He dismissed that there was any controversy over the SEZs in Hayrana, as 60 of them had already got official approval. The state government will acquire only 10 per cent of the remaining land for the industrialists in a SEZ after they had purchased 90 per cent of it on thier own.

The chief minister also claimed that his state had received Rs 50,000 crore FDI in past two years, commutively more than what it got in past 40 years.

UNI