Punjab deserve Chair in upper Yamuna River Board-Former Special CS Punjab writes to Union Jal Shakti Minister
Babushahi Network
Chandigarh, September 16, 2026: Former Punjab Principal Secretary Irrigation and Special Chief Secretary KBS Sidhu has demanded chair for Punjab in Upper Yamuna River Board.
In a letter written to Union Jal Shakti Minister, he has drawn his attention to non-consultation with Punjab while signing of Kishau Multipurpose project by Six states.
Read his full letter below:
KBS Sidhu IAS (Retd.) · Punjab Cadre, 1984 Batch
Special Chief Secretary, Government of Punjab (superannuated July 2021)
Principal Secretary, Irrigation, Punjab, 2012–2013 · Founder-Editor, The KBS Chronicle
House No. 115-C, Model Town
Patiala, Punjab – 147001
kbs.sidhu@gmail.com
16 September 2026
To
Shri C.R. Paatil
Union Minister of Jal Shakti
Government of India
New Delhi
SUBJECT
Kishau Multipurpose Project: Punjab’s exclusion from the Upper Yamuna framework, before the proposal goes to the Union Cabinet
Respected Sir,
Further to my letter of 5 September 2026 on the Ravi–Beas allocations, I write again as a private citizen with no affiliation to any political party. The signing of the Kishau Memorandum of Agreement in New Delhi yesterday has made this matter urgent.
On 15 September 2026, the Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi signed the agreement in your presence and that of the Union Home Minister. The project will create 1,562 million cubic metres of storage on the Tons and supply 517 million cubic metres of drinking water a year. Central assistance will meet ninety per cent of the water component. The agreement also settles, by consent, that Himachal Pradesh’s share of the water will pass to Delhi and Rajasthan, in return for their bearing Himachal’s power-component cost. The agreement, therefore, allocates water as well as approving construction, and Punjab had no part in it.
Undivided Punjab was a Yamuna basin State and irrigated its lands from the river through the Western Yamuna Canal. Its association with the basin ended in November 1966 through a change of law, while the river itself stayed where it was. The same reorganisation, however, did not end Haryana’s claim upon the Ravi and the Beas, rivers to which reorganised Haryana has never been riparian. The Centre carried that claim forward on Haryana’s standing as a successor to the undivided State, and its notification of March 1976 allotted Haryana 3.5 million acre-feet on that footing. It carried forward no part of Punjab’s corresponding standing in the Yamuna basin. Punjab was not a party to the Memorandum of Understanding of 12 May 1994, has no seat on the Upper Yamuna River Board, and was not consulted on Kishau. A successor State’s standing cannot survive reorganisation for one State and lapse for its neighbour.
Punjab does not oppose Kishau. The drinking-water needs of Delhi and Rajasthan are real. The Home Minister candidly acknowledged yesterday that the original Yamuna allocation left nothing for the river’s own environmental flow, which gives the project a purpose every State should support. Nor does Punjab, at this stage, press for a quantified share of Kishau’s storage. It asks for its place in the body that governs the basin, and for the reason it has been kept out to be placed on record.
I would, therefore, request that, before the Kishau proposal is placed before the Union Cabinet:
(i) the note for the Cabinet record that Punjab was neither a party to the agreement nor consulted on it, and set out the basis on which Punjab has been treated as having no standing in the Upper Yamuna basin since 1966;
(ii) Punjab be admitted as a full member of the Upper Yamuna River Board, with the same standing as the six basin States on Kishau’s implementation, on environmental-flow determinations, and on any transfer of shares between States; and
(iii) Punjab be given an opportunity to place its case whenever the 1994 allocations are reviewed, as the acknowledged omission of environmental flow will require.
The Board’s membership is not closed. It was enlarged once already, to admit Uttarakhand after that State was created in 2000. With Kishau now declared a national project, the Government of India will finance most of the new water the basin receives. Punjab’s place on the Board should be settled before the Cabinet approves that investment. Sixty years on, Punjab asks for a chair, not a share.
Yours faithfully,
KBS Sidhu, IAS (Retd.)
Punjab Cadre, 1984 Batch
Special Chief Secretary, Government of Punjab (superannuated July 2021)
Principal Secretary, Irrigation, Punjab, 2012–2013
Former Financial Commissioner Revenue, Punjab
Founder-Editor, The KBS Chronicle
Copy to
- Shri Amit Shah, Union Home Minister, who chaired the deliberations leading to the agreement, for information.
- The Chief Secretary, Government of Punjab, with the request that the State Government consider a formal representation.
- The Secretary, Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation.
- The Chairman, Central Water Commission.
- The Member Secretary, Upper Yamuna River Board.