CHANDIGARH: The next four days are going to be tense in the hair-trigger state of Haryana. Tomorrow Sunday, February 19 is the anniversary of the violent Jat agitation for the reservation last year, and the group front that fight has just announced that it will observe February 19 as Balidan Divas (Sacrifice Day).
And now the state’s main opposition party, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) has decided to organize a march to the neighbouring state of Punjab on February 23 to start digging the controversial Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal. To this, the radical sikh organization Dal Khalsa, which is opposed to the canal, has said it won’t let that happen.
Caught in this pincer, the Punjab government is taking no chances and has asked the Union Government to give it 20 more companies of paramilitary force personnel to keep the peace on its border with Haryana.
Sources said the state government of parkas Singh Badal has written a letter in this regard to New Delhi stating that they need the additional forces as state police personnel have been posted to guard the voting machines holding the votes cast in the state’s election on Feb. 4.
Due to the present contingency, companies of the Punjab Armed Police (PAP) and forces from some districts of the state are being rushed to Mohali to be deployed on the Punjab-Haryana border.
Telephone lines between Punjab Police officers and their counterparts are crackling with consultations on what the INLD supporters would be up to on Feb. 23. The INLD leader Abhay Chautala has said party workers will assemble in the grain market in Ambala on February 23 and begin their march across the border to begin digging the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal.
“We have sent a communication to the deputy commissioner of Ambala about our march. It would be the duty of the administration to make adequate arrangements to regulate traffic,” he said.
If the INLD is stopped, it would question mark on the Haryana government’s stand on the SYL canal, he added.
The radical Sikh organization Dal Khalsa took a dig at the INLD. The march and the symbolic digging announced by Abhay Singh Chautala was little more than a political stunt, it said.
Dal Khalsa leader Kanwar Pal Singh said the people of Punjab would resist such a misadventure at any cost. He said digging of the SYL canal was next to impossible. The people of Haryana ought to stop day-dreaming about its construction.
He said notwithstanding all the legal steps that the Congress and Akali Dal may have taken to oppose the SYL canal in recent times, the credit for stopping its construction in 1992 goes to Sikh freedom fighters who laid down their lives while defending the river waters of Punjab.