Supreme Court opinion against Punjab on the SYL canal

Who: A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Anil R Dave, the Punjab government of Parkash Singh Badal, the Haryana government and Punjab's opposition parties.

What: The Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal was designed to carry Ravi-Beas water from Punjab to Haryana, which was cut out of Punjab in 1966. On 8 April 1982 Indira Gandhi broke ground at Kapoori in Patiala district, the start of construction in Punjab (SANDRP). The Supreme Court's opinion likewise puts Punjab's start in the early 1980s. The Akali Dal answered with the Kapoori Morcha, which became the Dharam Yudh Morcha in August 1982, and The Tribune says a morcha against the canal and for the demands of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution was launched under Sant Harchand Singh Longowal. The Tribune dates the start of digging to 1984, but SANDRP records that work halted after Indira Gandhi's assassination that October, and clause 9.3 of the Rajiv-Longowal Accord (July 1985) set 15 August 1986 for finishing the canal. In July 1990 the chief engineer and an assistant were killed, and work stopped. In 2002 the Supreme Court told Punjab to finish the canal, and in 2004 it directed the Centre to put a central agency on it and Punjab to hand over the land. On 12 July 2004 Punjab passed the Termination of Agreements Act, cancelling its water-sharing agreements. The Centre sent the Act to the Supreme Court as a Presidential Reference, heard only in 2016.

On 10 November 2016 the bench answered every question against Punjab, unanimously holding that the 2004 Act was not in accordance with the Constitution, and that a state cannot use its own law to cancel a court's decree or end the agreement of 31 December 1981. This was an opinion on a reference, not a fresh order to dig the canal; the duty to build came from the earlier decrees. On 16 November Punjab notified the return of about 5,000 acres to their owners. Haryana challenged this; on 30 November the Supreme Court ordered status quo on the land and appointed receivers.

Where: The Supreme Court in New Delhi, and the canal route: about 120 km planned in Punjab and about 90 km in Haryana.

Why it mattered: Punjab's parties say the state has no water to spare, and in March 2016 Badal told the Assembly that not a drop would leave Punjab. The Anandpur Sahib Resolution had already called the Emergency-era Ravi-Beas award arbitrary and unjust. The 2016 opinion removed the legal footing of Punjab's 2004 law but did not finish the canal. In October 2023 the Supreme Court asked the Centre to survey the land, the canal still defunct.