Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar during a panel discussion on July 10 had asked the Punjab government to make New Chandigarh its capital, leave Chandigarh to Haryana, and cooperate on solving the water issues through dialogue.
Khattar during a panel discussion on the holistic development of Tricity, that is Panchkula, Chandigarh and Mohali also suggested setting up a special body for development of Chandigarh, the joint capital of the two states.
“Both Haryana and Punjab should cooperate with each other to resolve various inter-state water issues in the interest of the people of both the states. Punjab should not make it a prestige issue. Issues related to water between states can be solved by dialogue. I did not want to refer to the water issue on this platform as the development of the Tricity is the main focus of today’s panel discussion Khattar said.
On the other hand, during an event, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh outrightly rejected his Haryana counterpart’s demand and said that his State would not give up its resources to the neighboring Haryana, including the capital city of Chandigarh, its water, among others.
“Haryana being a new State, it should be assisted to set up its own capital, and Chandigarh, being the capital of Punjab, should be given to Punjab,” he added.
“Chandigarh indisputably belonged to Punjab. There was no question of agreeing to Khattar’s proposal,” CM Singh added.
Even Punjab Governor and UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore also support CM Singh’s decision by saying that coordination on the Tricity development related issues were already being done.
“Various accords in the past had given Chandigarh to Punjab but they were, unfortunately, not implemented,” the Punjab CM said.
