New Delhi: Environmentalists and policy experts have claimed that the government’s decision to go ahead with the Ken-Betwa river-linking project, despite opposition, was driven by “political motivations” and it should not have been approved in the first place.
The project, approved by the Union Cabinet in December 2021 at a cost of Rs 44,605 crore and launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December 2024, aims at linking the Ken and Betwa rivers — both tributaries of the Yamuna — to supply water to the drought-prone Bundelkhand region, which covers nine districts in Madhya Pradesh and four in Uttar Pradesh.
According to the Centre, the project is expected to irrigate 10.62 lakh hectares of land (8.11 lakh ha in Madhya Pradesh and 2.51 lakh ha in Uttar Pradesh), provide drinking water to around 62 lakh people and generate 103 megawatts of hydropower and 27 megawatts of solar power.
Government estimates suggest that 6,600 families will be displaced and around 45 lakh trees will be cut down due to the project.
At a public discussion on “Assessing the River Interlinking Project”, water expert Himanshu Thakkar said the project was presented as a solution to Bundelkhand’s water problem, but its “detailed project report says that this project’s primary objective is to provide water to the upper Betwa region, which is not part of Bundelkhand”.
“Essentially, this project is facilitating the export of water from Bundelkhand,” he claimed.
Thakkar, the coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), said the Supreme Court-mandated Central Empowered Committee (CEC) gave a critical report on the project, but it was ignored.
“In May 2017, the Forest Advisory Committee (of the environment ministry) actually wrote in the minutes of a meeting that ‘ideally, this project should not be given a clearance’. The FAC has never written like this,” he said.
Thakkar recalled that in June 2016, then water resources minister Uma Bharti had “threatened to go on a strike” if the project was not given clearances.
Shashi Shekhar, former secretary in the then Ministry of Water Resources, said the region’s hydrology does not “justify a project of this dimension”.
Asked how the project was approved despite several concerns, the retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer said, “They have justified it by manipulating data…. If you consider the correct data, the ground reality and ecological factors, this project should not have gone through.”
He also questioned the government’s claim that the project would irrigate 10.62 lakh hectares. “It is coming out of the air. It just does not meet the ground reality,” Shekhar said.
He added that the Supreme Court has failed to act despite the CEC report opposing the project and the ground realities being known.
Asked if the jal shakti ministry had explored alternative solutions for Bundelkhand’s water crisis, Shekhar said, “To the best of my knowledge, the alternatives were never discussed.”
Jasbir Singh Chouhan, former principal chief conservator of forests, Madhya Pradesh, said experts had warned against the project yet the government still went ahead with it.
One of the most-debated aspects of the project is the construction of a dam on the Ken river inside the Panna National Park and Tiger Reserve, where tigers went locally extinct in 2009 but were reintroduced over the next decade.
“As far as wildlife is concerned, it will be a huge loss to a place that revived its tiger numbers after completely losing the big cat,” Chouhan said.
According to the Centre’s National Tiger Conservation Authority’s “Status of Tigers – 2022” report, the Panna Tiger Reserve is connected to the Ranipur Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh through the North Panna and Satna forest divisions. In the south, the fragmented habitat of the South Panna Territorial Division helps tigers disperse towards the Bandhavgarh and Noradehi wildlife sanctuaries.
“The current estimated population of tigers in this block is 79 individuals occupying an area of 2,840 square kilometres. This represents a significant increase in the tiger population and range expansion.
“Unfortunately, a substantial portion of the biodiverse Panna Tiger Reserve is currently under the threat of submersion due to the proposed Ken-Betwa river-linking project, which poses a significant risk to the conservation efforts in the area,” the report says.
Chouhan said at least three to four tigresses live in the area that will be submerged by the dam. “A lot of habitat loss will happen and around a million trees are expected to be felled in the core tiger area alone,” he said.
Besides tigers, the reserve also has a critically-endangered vulture population.
An expert body under the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife had called for “an independent hydrological study of the river Ken” and said “no developmental project should destroy the ecology of the remnant fragile ecosystems and an important tiger habitat in the country”.
