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Ecology & Environment, Geography
Mahesh

26/12/24 11:13 AM IST

Ken-Betwa river-linking project

In News
  • Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently laid the foundation stone for the Ken-Betwa river-linking project in Madhya Pradesh’s Khajuraho.
Ken- Betwa link
  • The link will be in the form of a canal that will be fed by the new Daudhan Dam on the Ken, to be built within Panna Tiger Reserve.
  • The national government has said that the dam will generate 103 MW of hydroelectric power.
  • The linking canal will flow through Chhatarpur, Tikamgarh and Jhansi districts, with the project expected to irrigate 6.3 lakh hectares of land every year. 
Regions to be benefitted
  • The project lies in Bundelkhand, which spreads across 13 districts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
  • According to the Jal Shakti Ministry, the project will be of immense benefit to the water-starved region, especially the districts of Panna, Tikamgarh, Chhatarpur, Sagar, Damoh, Datia, Vidisha, Shivpuri and Raisen of Madhya Pradesh, and Banda, Mahoba, Jhansi and Lalitpur of Uttar Pradesh.
  • It will pave the way for more river interlinking projects to ensure that scarcity of water does not become an inhibitor for development in the country.
Challenges
  • India enacted the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 at a critical juncture, when its wildlife was in peril.
  • The key provisions of the Act (Sections 18 and 35) relate to setting aside areas of significance to wildlife as ‘sanctuaries’ and ‘national parks’. Sections 29 and 35(6) restrict human activities within them without prior approval.
  • Diversion of, stopping or enhancement of the flow or water into or outside of them is taboo unless doing so is deemed to be necessary to improve and better manage the wildlife within a sanctuary or a national park.
  • And in the case of the Panna Tiger Reserve, the CEC has found such diversion to not be necessary to improve and better manage wildlife in the park.
  • Downstream of the national park lies the Ken Gharial Sanctuary, created to protect the critically endangered Gangetic gharial (Gavialis gangeticus).
  • The destructive impact of the proposed dam on the flow of water into and outside of this sanctuary should be immediately clear, as also its violation of the requirement under the Act for a sanctuary.
  • The CEC is clear in its report that “the Standing Committee of the NBWL has not considered the impact of the project on the downstream gharial sanctuary”.
Source- The Hindu

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