Khattar slams AAP: Hitting back at the Aam Aadmi Party for holding Haryana responsible for floods in parts of the national capital, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Sunday (July 16) said finger-pointing is neither good for the state nor for the country.
Several AAP leaders have alleged that the BJP-led Haryana government flooded the Yamuna river by releasing excess water from the Hathinikund barrage, resulting in water flowing on the streets of Delhi.
Khattar said that the Aam Aadmi Party cannot defame Haryana with such allegations.
“This blame game is not good. It is neither in the interest of humanity, nor in the interest of the state or the country.” He said, “It can never occur to anyone to harm someone to protect themselves. Only a low minded person can do this. Haryana can do ‘seva’ but can never think of harming anyone else,” he said.
The chief minister said the mechanism of the Hathinikund barrage does not allow storage of a large amount of water like a reservoir, and if more water is kept in the barrage than the permissible limit, “huge damage” can result.
Khattar takes a dig at AAP
Stating that various districts in his own state were also battling the effects of water, he asked whether “we will first submerge our districts and then Delhi”.
“It is like hum to doobenge sanam, tumko bhi le doobenge,” he said in a lighter vein.
The Chief Minister said that his government also had to vacate many villages.
The AAP has also alleged that the gates of the ITO barrage in Delhi, built by the Haryana government, are jammed due to accumulation of silt. The party demanded that its maintenance should be handed over to the Delhi government for more efficient management.
Khattar on Saturday constituted a two-member fact-finding committee to probe the jammed gates of the ITO barrage.
“We checked our records. Money was never given from Haryana for its maintenance. That was given till 2018 by the Indraprastha power plant which is now closed, when the plant was closed in 2018, the AAP government) Never said this problem could come. They are talking about it now when the problem has arisen,” Khattar said.
He said that two years ago, 6.5-7 lakh cusecs of water was released regularly from Hathnikund barrage.
“On July 11 this year, 3.69 lakh cusecs of water was released. And it spread over six seven districts of Haryana before reaching Delhi, yet they (AAP government) failed to remove the remaining water in Delhi. This means that They did not maintain the Yamuna. Unauthorized construction on the Yamuna blocked the water flow,” he said.
Khattar said, “We have constituted a committee and asked them to check their systems including encroachments on Okhla, ITO and Yamuna.”
(with PTI inputs)
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