Water War: Amarinder Resigns From Lok Sabha Over Satlej-Yamuna Link verdict  

* With an eye on upcoming Assembly elections, Amarinder uses Supreme Court verdict to hit out at the Akali-led Government.

* Congress MLAs too resigned from Punjab Assembly.

Punjab Congress President Amarinder Singh on Thursday resigned from the Lok Sabha in protest against the "injustice" to the state by the Supreme Court in its verdict on sharing of water from the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal by states including Punjab and Haryana. All his party legislators also resigned from their assembly seats.

The Supreme Court on Thursday held as unconstitutional the state's 2004 law intended to deny Haryana its share of the Sutlej-Yamuna water.

Amarinder Singh sent his resignation to the Lok Sabha Speaker and sought a personal meeting next week. The Congress legislators who resigned would meet the assembly Speaker in Chandigarh on Friday to personally hand over their resignation papers.

Blaming the ruling Akalis for bringing the people to this situation, Amarinder Singh said Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal and his team had failed to defend Punjab’s stand in the court.

In his resignation, Amarinder Singh, who is heading the party's campaign for the assembly elections early next year, said he had decided to quit as MP from Amritsar "as a mark of protest against the deprivation of the people of my state of the much-needed Sutlej river water".

Describing the SYL judgment by the apex court as a "major blow to the people of Punjab," he said in a statement that he had always fought for their legitimate right on this issue and continued to stand by them.

Blaming the ruling Akalis for bringing the people to this situation, Amarinder Singh said Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal and his team had failed to defend Punjab's stand in the court.

At the initiative of the then Congress Government headed by Amarinder Singh, the Punjab assembly had unanimously passed the law terminating all the agreements with Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Chandigarh and Delhi on the sharing of Sutlej-Yamuna river water.