LAHORE, May 27: Farmer groups in Punjab on Tuesday joined the chorus against the government’s decision to shelve the Kalabagh Dam Project, terming it an “anti-federation act that could harm the country beyond redemption.”

The government had on Monday announced closing the chapter of the KBD once and for all on the plea of saving the federation, but it had to alter its stance the very next day in the wake of dissenting voices. Now it says the issue has been “put on hold for the time being”.

The Punjab Water Council and the Kissan Board Pakistan have termed it an act which could hold the country’s future hostage and something which flew in the face of the government’s own claims to use agriculture as an engine of growth.

“Dropping a project of such an immense importance without even starting a consultation process on it bespeaks of the government’s way of decision making,” they decried.

Speaking at a press conference, the PWC office-bearers said no one had any idea how and why it had been decided that Punjab (a producer of over 80 per cent national agriculture products) was not part of the federation.

“The government does not tire of claims of making parliament sovereign, but no one knows when the present parliament discussed the dam project and decided to drop it. Apparently, one man has made an announcement without initiating any debate on the issue.

“Instead of starting a political process to develop consensus on the issue, debating it in parliament and taking it to the Council of Common Interest for a final decision, the federal minister has taken a unilateral decision – an attitude worse than a dictator’s,” they said.

As the water reservoir capacity was going down with each passing day due to multiple effects, they said, abandoning the Kalabagh dam would further hamper agriculture growth.

The PPP, even after claims of being a federal party, had acted more as a regional party with narrow political expediencies. The federation certainly includes Punjab which has totally been ignored in taking the decision.

The technical committee, comprising experts on the field, had declared Kalabagh dam a viable project. “How can one man simply declare it ‘impractical’ and announce shelving it for good. How he has reached the decision that negates the opinion of experts is any body’s guess,” they said.

Sardar Zafar Husain Khan of the Kissan Board Pakistan is of the opinion: “The democratic governments normally start dialogue on the contentious issues to evolve political consensus on them, and only democratically elected governments can do that.”

The present government, instead of trying to build national consensus, had simply dropped the project after two months of its assuming power. This narrow political expediency would cost the nation dearly and hold the posterity hostage, he expressed fear.

By dropping the mega reservoir project, the nation would lose five-million-acre-foot water, 4,500MW of power supply and Rs2.5 billion already spent on the project. “The cost is too staggering to be paid by the nation,” he said.