After the Punjab Assembly passed the Bill terminating all pacts about water sharing with neighbouring states, the nation watched Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing his surprise and Congress president Sonia Gandhi claiming that she hadd no prior knowledge what one of the Congress Chief Ministers was up to. The Indian Express carried a lead story 48 hours after the passage of the bill that the Centre was obviously asleep, its eyes wide shut. A collage of the news clippings of stories filed by me was the key visual as the newspaper detailed how it was reporting every move when everyone else was claiming to be in the dark.

SYL: Centre’s eyes were wide shut

S P Singh

Chandigarh 

“WAS the Prime Minster sleeping?” BJP’s Sushma Swaraj thundered in Rajya Sabha on July 13, while India’s federal lawmakers, the MPs in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha expressed surprise at the Punjab Assembly’s move to annul the Ravi-Beas water-sharing pacts with Haryana and Rajasthan on July 12, 2004. 

But, everyone should rather have been expecting what happened and the damage control exercise could have started much earlier. Neither the Central government nor the Congress high command reacted to news reports about the impending legislation in the Punjab Assembly. 

Five days before the Punjab Assembly presented the nation with a fail accompli in the form of the Punjab Termination of Agreements, Act 2004, The Indian Express broke the story, telling the nation what the Amarinder Government was going to do. “Govt plans legislation to escape SYL; Special Assembly Session likely on July 12; efforts to nullify 1981 contract” was what The Indian Express reported on July 8. It could not have been more explicit, when the Punjab government’s move was being kept as the most guarded secret. The newspaper even predicted the time of the session – 2 p.m. 

That former Attorney General Soli J Sorabjee was involved in the exercise and helped in drafting the Bill was also reported on July 8. Throughout, the run-up to the Assembly action, this newspaper was reporting developments on a day-to-day basis; even Amarinder’s meeting with Sorabjee. For good measure, it even published Sorabjee’s photo with the story. 

The next day, on July 9, Amarinder met Union Water Resources Minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi. His meeting coincided with the formal announcement that the Punjab Assembly has been convened for July 12 at 2 pm, exactly as The Indian Express had reported earlier on July 8. That the government even considered at one stage to leave the 1981 Agreement untouched and instead amend the Northern India Canal and Drainage Act 1873 was also reported on July 9. As events unfolded, all these reports were later borne out. No one from the State Government denied any part at any stage. 

At every stage the Centre had the option of intervening. The Congress high command could have informally asked Chief Minister Amarinder Singh to pull back and Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil, ever so eager to send Governors packing after detecting ideological hues, could have spoken to Punjab Governor O.P. Verma on the question of gubernatorial assent. 

“The fact of the matter is: Everyone knew. What were the Centre’s intelligence agencies doing? If they couldn’t smell what was going on, is it too much to expect them to read the reports in national newspapers? No one except the very gullible would be taken in by the protestations of the UPA as well as the NDA leaders,” said an angry Haryana Congress leader.

July 14, 2004

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