Declaring that Chandigarh belongs to Punjab, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has stated that he will soon meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to demand transfer of the Union Territory to the 'parent state.'
"It is unfortunate that even after several years of the reorganisation of Punjab, Chandigarh is not transferred to its parent state," he told media persons in Jalandhar on the occasion of Punjab Day on Thursday.
Badal claimed that the Centre had even promised to transfer Chandigarh to Punjab.
His comments on Chandigarh, which is the common capital of Punjab and Haryana, comes amid the demands by the Congress government in Haryana for a separate high court and the tussle over sharing of river waters.
Badal accused the Central Water Commission of 'duplicity of standards' on the issue.
'It is a paradoxical that the Sri Dasmesh Canal project was stalled by the CWC in case of Punjab but it never objected to Haryana's constructing Hansi-Butana Canal for providing irrigation facilities to the areas earlier included in the SYL canal project,' he said in a statement.
The chief minister also lashed out at the Congress for political, economic and religious discrimination against Punjab and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi.
'Everybody knows the 1984 riots were Congress-sponsored but no stern action was taken against its leaders,' he said on the recent acquittal of former Union Minister Jagdish Tytler by the Delhi High Court.
He, however, refused to condemn the alleged role of Gujarat Chief Minister Narender Modi for the post-Godhra riots of 2002.
