Punjab is set to move the Supreme Court against the Kishau Multipurpose Project, questioning the Centre’s decision to proceed with the Yamuna basin project without taking the state on board and reiterating its claim to a share of the river waters.Sources in the Punjab Water Resources Department told The Tribune that the office of the Advocate General had been asked to approve the draft plaint. The document had already been vetted by a senior advocate, who previously served as the Advocate General of Punjab.The move comes days after six states — Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi — signed an agreement to take forward the long-pending 422 MW Kishau project on the Tons river, a tributary of the Yamuna. The project, with a proposed storage capacity of up to 1,562 million cubic metres, is intended to provide irrigation, drinking and industrial water, besides generating hydropower.Punjab’s contention is that the project cannot be finalised on the basis of the existing Yamuna water-sharing arrangement as the state itself was excluded from the 1994 agreement governing allocation of the river’s surface flow.“The 1972 Irrigation Commission Report states that Punjab falls within the Yamuna basin. Since 1992, Punjab has been requesting the Central Government to include it in all discussions on Yamuna water allocation,” said an official in the Water Resources Department on condition of anonymity.The state government contends that the May 12, 1994, Yamuna water-sharing MoU, signed between Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, does not include Punjab. “In 1954, Punjab was entitled to two-thirds of the Yamuna waters, but under the 1994 arrangement, the state was completely ignored. This MoU cannot be treated as an exhaustive or final settlement, particularly as Clause 8 provides for a review after 2025. Therefore, the allocation should now be reviewed and Punjab should get its legitimate share,” said the official.Punjab’s larger argument is that the Yamuna, like the Ravi and the Beas, was part of the erstwhile Punjab’s river system before the state’s reorganisation in 1966. “If Haryana, despite not being a riparian state of the Ravi and the Beas, can receive their waters as a successor state, Punjab should similarly be considered a successor state for the purpose of the Yamuna waters,” the official said.Every time Punjab’s river-water dispute has been discussed over the past five years, Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann has reiterated that if non-riparian states can be allocated Punjab’s river waters, Punjab is equally entitled to the Yamuna waters.The state is expected to rely on the March 12, 1954, agreement between Punjab (before its reorganisation) and Uttar Pradesh, under which Punjab was entitled to a two-thirds of the Yamuna waters. It argued that reorganisation of Punjab could not automatically extinguish that entitlement.Punjab had already lodged a complaint with the Centre under Section 3 of the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1957, on April 25 last year, seeking the constitution of a tribunal to adjudicate its claim to the Yamuna waters. With no action having been taken on the complaint, the state is now considering judicial intervention.The Punjab Government argues that the principle governing inter-state river water-sharing must be applied consistently — either the riparian principle or the successor-state principle — and that it cannot be selectively invoked to deny Punjab its claimed share of the Yamuna.