Chandigarh, July 30: Punjab villagers are keeping fingers crossed over a Supreme Court verdict they hope will clear the way for getting back plots they had given up for a 214km-long canal, in an inter-state dispute with echoes of Singur but years older.
The verdict, likely soon, will decide whether the construction of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL), a long-standing dispute between Punjab and Haryana, will go ahead or not.
If the project is scrapped, it could clear the way for the return of around 3,928 acres in Punjab acquired from villagers in the 1980s.
"For over 20 years, the land has been lying idle. We lost our land and did not receive any water," said Balwinder Singh, a farmer in Kami Kalan village in Patiala, some 90km from Chandigarh.
Kami Kalan is one of the many villages spread across the districts of Patiala, SAS Nagar, Fatehgarh Sahib and Ropar, through which a stretch of the 122km-long main canal was to pass.
The farmer's words brought back memories of Singur, where land protests halted a Tata project that ultimately moved out of Bengal.
At the root of the Punjab-Haryana dispute is water, an emotive issue in the Akali Dal-BJP-ruled Punjab where elections are due early next year.
The political pot has already started churning. Last Sunday, state Congress chief Amarinder Singh announced that he and the 46 party legislators would resign if the apex court verdict went against the state.
"Around 10 lakh acres in the Malwa region would go dry if the apex court orders the construction of the SYL canal. The (Parkash Singh) Badal government would be responsible for this."
The Akali Dal dismissed Amarinder's threat as an empty slogan. "Why hadn't you resigned when Indira Gandhi initiated the digging of the canal? This announcement is nothing but a political gimmick," Badal said.
The Congress was in power in Punjab in 1982 when Indira Gandhi flagged off the project. The state government later carried out phased acquisition of 5,376 acres for constructing the main and minor canals to link the two rivers.
Haryana has completed the 90km-odd stretch of the main canal starting from Ambala to Karnal through Kurukshetra. The project, however, got stalled on the Punjab side during the Khalistan movement. In 2004 the then Amarinder regime passed the Punjab Termination of Agreement Act, 2004, that stopped construction of the SYL canal, prompting Haryana to move court.
In March this year, the Badal government decided to de-notify the 5,376 acres acquired for the project with the passage of the Punjab Sutlej-Yamuna Link Land (Return of Property Rights) Bill, 2016, to facilitate the return of 3,928 acres to villagers, sparking fresh protests from Haryana.
Within five days of the passage of the bill, the court asked Punjab to maintain status quo on the project.