Chandigarh [India]: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday questioned the resignation of the president of the Punjab unit of the Congress party, Captain Amarinder Singh, from the 16th Lok Sabha moments after the Supreme Court ruling declared a 2004 law passed by the state assembly to deny Sutlej Yamuna Link Canal water to Haryana as illegal and unconstitutional.
“Has anyone seen Captain Amarinder Singh in the Lok Sabha? A person who has not gone to the Lok Sabha automatically becomes eligible for resignation. He should have been dismissed, he has just done some face saving exercise,” Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment and BJP MP Vijay Sampla told ANI here.
“About the Punjab MLAs, their term was about to get over by next month, that is why this is a drama,” he added.
Sampla also blamed the Congress for being the root cause of the water sharing problem.
“When the SYL was constructed by Indira Gandhi, then Captain Amarinder Singh was prominently behind it,”Sampla added.
Post his resignation from the Lok Sabha, Captain Amarinder Singh has sought a personal meeting with the speaker next week.
Congress MLAs have also sent their resignations to the Speaker of the Punjab Assembly, and will meet him this morning to personally hand over their letters.
The Supreme Court held as unconstitutional the 2004 law passed by Punjab to terminate the Sutlej- Yamuna Link ( SYL) canal water sharing agreement with neighbouring states.
In his resignation letter, Captain Amarinder said he had decided to quit as a member of the 16th Lok Sabha from Amritsar constituency in Punjab with immediate effect “as a mark of protest against the deprivation of the people of my state of the much-needed Sutlej river water.
The Centre had said that it was having a neutral stand in the matter in which the court has recorded the stand of Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir(ANI)