Chandigarh, June 20 – Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has opposed giving water to Punjab through the Indus system, after which the political atmosphere in Punjab has flared up again. Punjab has already been in dispute with neighboring states on some issue or the other regarding water.
 Now that the central government’s proposal is to build a 113-km-long canal to divert excess water from Jammu and Kashmir to Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, Omar Abdullah has taken a new stand.
Agriculture Minister Shivraj Chouhan had said during his recent visit to Punjab that the water of the Indus Water Treaty will be given to the northern states. 
The Union Ministry of Water Resources has been making a proposal to build a new canal for some time now. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has said that he does not have water himself and why will he give water to Punjab. Abdullah said that he will never let this happen.
 He argued that there is already a drought-like situation in Jammu. Abdullah referred to the Shahpur Kandi Dam, which was built on the Ravi River to stop the flow of water to Pakistan. The Punjab government has not yet issued an official statement on his stand, while the Shiromani Akali Dal said that Omar Abdullah's stance is another attempt to do injustice to Punjab.
The Shiromani Akali Dal has appealed to the central government to correct the historical injustice done to Punjab by the then Indira Gandhi government during the distribution of the waters of the Indus Treaty. Former minister and senior leader of the Shiromani Akali Dal, Dr. Daljit Singh Cheema, said that the then Indira Gandhi government had done a great injustice to Punjab by giving a large share of river waters to the non-riparian state of Rajasthan. He said that every time river water is taken away, the injustice is done to Punjab itself.
Cheema said that Punjab lost its groundwater for the country's food grains and now the amount of water in the rivers has reduced considerably. He said that the central government should ensure that Punjab gets additional water from the Indus Water Treaty project. Cheema has also appealed to Omar Abdullah not to issue such dangerous statements.