CHANDIGARH—The Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) diverted scarce water from the Bhakra and Pong reservoirs to poll-bound Rajasthan earlier this year, lowering their water levels to the dead-storage mark at a time of extreme shortage, HuffPost India has learnt.

The water was released at a time when Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government was besieged by rampant farmer unrest.

Interviews with government officials in Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh indicate that BBMB officials released this water to Rajasthan without sanction, prompting the Haryana government to file a complaint. Some of this surplus water was allegedly released under the guise of maintenance work on a rarely used irrigation tunnel at Pong dam.

Credit by - Huffpost

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