A five judge constitution bench had recently termed as "unconstitutional" the 2004 Punjab law which terminated the SYL water pact, saying the state cannot "unilaterally" terminate it or legislate to "nullify" the verdict of the highest court.
A bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice D Y Chandrachud today told lawyer Rakesh Dahiya, who sought urgent listing of a criminal contempt petition, that the plea would come up in due course.
"This constitutes the offence of criminal contempt," the lawyer said.
In its verdict, the apex court recently responded in the "negative" to all the four questions referred to it for the opinion by then President APJ Abdul Kalam on the validity of the law passed by then Punjab government-led by Captain Amrinder Singh to nullify the court verdicts and unilaterally terminating the almost three-dacade old SYL water sharing agreement.
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seeking enforcement of the apex court verdicts and appointment of the receivers to ensure that the project land in Punjab remained intact.
The controversial 1981 water-sharing agreement came into being after Haryana was carved out of Punjab in 1966.
For effective allocation of water, SYL canal link was conceptualised and both the states were required to construct their portions within their territories.
Haryana constructed the portion of SYL canal in its territory. However, Punjab after initial work, stopped the work, leading to spate of litigations.
In 2004, the Congress government of the state came out with the Punjab Termination of Agreement Act with an intention to terminate the 1981 agreement and all other pacts relating to sharing of waters of rivers Ravi and Beas.
Punjab challenged the verdict by filing an original suit which was rejected in 2004 by the Supreme Court which asked the Centre to take over the remaining infrastructural work of the SYL canal project.