ken betwa river linking

New Research Raises Fresh Doubts About India’s River Linking Plans

A long-standing plan to shift water between rivers in north-central India powers on, despite new science that casts doubt on its efficacy, and concerns over major ecological impacts.

In October this year, the Indian forest department gave final clearance for a project to transfer water from the Ken river as it flows through the state of Madhya Pradesh to the nearby Betwa river. The Ken-Betwa river interlink, which would involve damming the Ken and laying a canal to the Betwa, is supposed to be the first of 30 proposed river interlinks which would fundamentally transform India’s river systems.

The original idea was conceptualised in the 19^th century by Arthur Cotton, a British general and irrigation engineer. Cotton suggested connecting all of India’s major rivers to enable better irrigation and navigation, and to capitalise on what was seen as the paradoxical phenomenon of having floods in one part of the country while other areas faced drought.

Post independence, despite official enthusiasm for large infrastructure projects, including hydropower dams, this particular approach did not gain any significant traction. In 1980 the Ministry of Irrigation (now subsumed under the Ministry of Jal Shakti) prepared a National Perspective Plan (NPP) “for transferring water from water surplus basins to water-deficit basins”, but no further government action followed.

In 2002, however, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who was the President of India at the time, made a speech mentioning the subject. Using the speech, Ranjit Lal, a senior lawyer to the Supreme Court, filed a public interest litigation in September 2002, and the court pronounced a judgement soon after asking for the project to be accelerated.

Decisions made based on secret data

In 2012, the Supreme Court came back to the subject and declared in its judgement that that “these projects are in the national interest, as is the unanimous view of all experts, most state governments and particularly, the central government”. But environmental experts who were consulted on the project as members of an expert committee set up as part of the Supreme Court judgements have regularly raised concerns.

Also read: Ken-Betwa Interlink Means ‘Bundelkhand Will Suffer for Decades to Come’

Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, a network of activists working in the water sector, was a member of the Ministry of Water Resources’ expert committee on river interlinking from 2009 to 2011. He told The Third Pole that while most of the committee members were government appointees who agreed with the project, independent experts like him, water management pioneer Rajendra Singh and watershed conservationist Vijay Paranjape often dissented.

One of the major issues for Thakkar was the use of secret hydrological data. “When I asked for the data as a member of the expert committee, I was told that the Ken is part of the Ganges basin, an international basin, and [since] hydrology figures of international basins are a state secret, these cannot be made available [even to the committee members],” he said.

“The hydrology data pertaining to the Ken basin and the Betwa basin is neither in the public domain nor has it ever undergone any independent public scrutiny. In fact, the rainfall data of districts the Ken and the Betwa pass through, in the previous four years (2023, 2022, 2021, 2020), is not appreciably different. So why has the Ken basin been categorised as having surplus water?”

Bhopal Singh, director general of the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) which is entrusted with the river linking project, disputes this. He told The Third Pole: “the project was based on detailed hydrological and simulation studies duly accounting [for] the upstream/downstream needs, environmental flows, etc., in the Ken basin.”

“The hydrological studies were done by the National Institute of Hydrology (NIH), Roorkee, and examined and reviewed by the Central Water Commission,” Singh added. The NWDA website carries a detailed project report based on a NIH study conducted in 2003-04, but the study itself is not included. Singh told The Third Pole that “the entire modelling cannot be shared”.

Also read: Ken-Betwa: No Cost Analysis or Environment Impact Study, Structures Make Way into Project

New science may upturn old models

Another urgent issue is that science has moved a far pace from Cotton’s time, and the impact of interlinking rivers may be much more complicated than was appreciated in the 19^th century.

Subimal Ghosh, institute chair professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay’s Department of Civil Engineering and convener of the Interdisciplinary Program in Climate Studies, explained that atmospheric water has traditionally not been factored into consideration of water cycles.

A recent study which Ghosh co-authored found that adjacent river basins do not exist in isolation, and moving water from one to another may have additional impact due to atmospheric water. The study builds on the fact that towards the end of the Indian summer monsoon, when the soil is saturated and evapotranspiration (the supply of moisture from the land to the atmosphere) is fairly high, recycled precipitation contributes to about 25% of monsoon rainfall. If water from one basin were to be used to irrigate another basin, the combination of increased evapotranspiration and wind could reduce the late monsoonal rain by 12% in some arid regions of the country, and increase rainfall up to 10% in other parts.

“Now we know for certain that altering the terrestrial water cycle can impact atmospheric processes,” said Ghosh. He argued that there is “an urgent need to include rigorous model-guided evaluation of hydro-meteorological consequences” for projects like river interlinking.

In response, Singh of the NWDA said that they could not comment on a hypothetical study. “Considering the scale of meteorological and hydrological cycles in the country, these inter-basin water transfers to water-short areas are minor in nature … As far as the Ken-Betwa link is concerned, the majority of harnessed flood water shall be utilised in the Ken basin itself and some water shall be utilised to fulfil the water needs of other regions including recharge of existing tanks in the Bundelkhand region,” he added.

Ken River. Photo: Dheeraj Mishra.

The illusion of water surplus

A deeper problem, according to Thakkar, may be that the river basins classified as having a water surplus are only regarded as such because they are less developed. He pointed out that districts in the upper Ken basin are largely devoid of water-intensive agriculture, and with few dams built for storage. In contrast, the lower Betwa runs through agricultural districts where water-intensive crops are grown, with a fair number of dams. The surplus, he said, is only an illusion created by the different levels of water utilisation in different geographies.

“Now dams are sought to be built in the upper Betwa region, which will create a shortfall in the existing lower Betwa basin dams,” said Thakkar. “That shortfall is proposed to be rectified by water from the Ken basin.”

In response, Singh said that the Ken-Betwa link is not only about the inter-basin transfer of water – the central premise of river interlinking from Cotton’s time to the Supreme Court decisions – but also about conserving flood water. Most rainfall occurs in a few days during the monsoon, and “there are hardly any flows in the Ken during the non-monsoon period,” said Singh. “The region is also not very rich in groundwater due to hard rock and marginal alluvium terrain. We expect this project to stabilise the availability of water and improve water management in the region particularly during drought years.”

Major downstream impacts of river interlinking

Singh’s vision of the total utilisation of water raises its own issues, according to Depinder Kapur, director of the water programme at the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi. “The more river waters we use for agriculture and irrigation and urban consumption, the less will be left to enter the sea, especially in peninsular India where rivers aren’t fed by Himalayan waters,” said Kapur.

According to a 2018 study, if all 30 proposed river interlinking projects in the country are fully implemented, the average annual discharge by the affected basins will reduce by 73%. While the study focused on impacts to wetlands and estuaries, which would be deprived of key sources of water, there would also be major ramifications for the ocean.

Also read: Ken-Betwa Link: Jal Shakti Secy Had Rejected Provisions on Water-Sharing Between UP and MP

A significant fall in the flow of fresh river water into the sea would disrupt the upper layer of water in the Bay of Bengal, which is made up of low-salinity and low-density water that helps maintain a sea surface temperature higher than 28 degrees Celsius. This high surface temperature in turn creates low-pressure areas and intensifies monsoon activity, explained Mihir Shah, distinguished professor at Shiv Nadar University and former chair of a new National Water Policy drafting committee set up by the Ministry of Jal Shakti in 2019.

“Rainfall over much of the [Indian] subcontinent is effectively controlled by this layer of low-salinity water. A disruption in this layer because of the massive damming proposed by the river interlinks … could have serious long-term consequences for climate and rainfall in the subcontinent, endangering the livelihoods of a vast population.”

Rivers carry more than water, and sediment would also be held back by new dams built for river interlinking. This is a critical concern for the deltas of the Ganga–Brahmaputra, Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri basins, home to more than 160 million people who would be deeply impacted by sea level rise due to climate change. A new study of the Ganga-Brahmaputra Delta found that the approximately 1 billion tonnes of sediment that rivers currently carry each year would increase by 34-60% in the 21st century because of more monsoon rainfall. More sediment in the delta would help to offset sea level rise and naturally sustain the delta.

But, as the 2018 study pointed out, if all dams involved in the proposed river interlinking projects are built, this sediment load would fall by 87%.

Singh of the NWDA responded by saying that sediment trapping by reservoirs and their impact on deltas was “always exaggerated without proper scientific study”. While suggesting that such impacts would be “nominal”, he told The Third Pole that the NWDA had “already initiated system studies of the proposed link projects to study the likely impact of climate change on hydrology and water availability, demand patterns, surface and ground water interactions”.

Looking ahead, with the Bharatiya Janata Party having returned to power in Madhya Pradesh in the November 2023 elections, and with river interlinking having been featured in the party’s 2019 general election manifesto, it seems likely that work on the Ken-Betwa link will be prioritised as evidence of the plan making progress.

Charu Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Rajasthan.

This article was originally published on The Third Pole.

Watch | Prahlad Patel on the Long-Term Impacts of the Ken-Betwa Project

The Jal Shakti MoS discusses the long term impacts of the controversial project for the Bundelkhand region and its effect on farmers.

In this episode of ‘Krishi ki Baat’, Indra Shekhar Singh interviews Prahlad Patel, minister of state of Jal Shakti.

Starting with the issue of the Ken-Betwa river linking, Patel discusses its long term impacts for the Bundelkhand region and the effect on farmers. The feasibility and implementation of other water schemes like Jal Jeevan piped water scheme and other irrigation schemes are discussed.

Interview: ‘What Will Finally Happen With the Ken-Betwa Project, No One Knows’

A wide-ranging interview with Medha Patkar on contemporary environmental issues and the peoples’ movements against them.

Thrissur: Medha Patkar, one of the founder members of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, has lent her voice to several social and environmental protests in the country, including the farmers’ protests against the three controversial farm laws.

On December 10, Patkar was in Thrissur, Kerala, to support a protest against a semi-high speed rail project, called the ‘SilverLine’, led by residents across the state affected by it. They were organised under the ‘K-Rail SilverLine Viruddha Janakeeya Samiti’.

Medha Patkar. Photo: PTI

The Wire Science interviewed Patkar at this event, about current environmental issues in India, from the country’s big dam push to the importance of “rising above party lines”. It is presented below with light edits for grammar, style and repetition. The Wire Science’s questions are in bold and clarifications in square brackets.

You have been very vocal about the bane of river interlinking – you have called it a capitalist’s dream. We’re seeing such a project unfold now in Bundelkhand: the Union Cabinet just approved the Ken-Betwa river interlinking project two days ago. It now costs Rs 44,000 crore, and 10 villages will be displaced and 23 lakh trees cut.

Yes, there is a struggle going on. We had a conference on the Ken-Betwa project, by which many cultural monuments and forests are going to be submerged. People feel that river-linking is one single line drawn on a map. That’s not what it is. The project includes six dams that are to come up on the Betwa. The cumulative impact of these dams has not been studied.

And two states are involved – Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. So the conflict will go on. Just like in the case of the Narmada: although it’s the same party in power in Gujarat and Maharashtra, the states are still fighting. It is very necessary that [Ken-Betwa river interlinking] has to be considered as partly illegal and anti-social.

Today’s Modi government’s approach is to declare one development project after the other. They call it development. But they are promising different areas… So the Uttar Pradesh area related to the Ken-Betwa is an electoral promise, that we will bring you the water. Shivraj Singh [Chouhan] did the same thing. He promised the whole of the Malwa region [western and central Madhya Pradesh] that it would be irrigated with Narmada waters. But the Narmada is in the Nimar region [of southwest Madhya Pradesh].

Those links are so horrible – big pipelines. And the Narmada reservoirs are being emptied; the Narmada is drying, dying. How will the Narmada people get access to water to irrigate their lands which they do through small lift irrigation today?

So what will finally happen [in the Ken-Betwa river interlinking project], no one knows. We have studied the Ken-Betwa project, published a booklet on it. Real investigations – impact assessments, even hydrological data analyses – have not taken place.

Also read: Ken-Betwa Interlink Means ‘Bundelkhand Will Suffer for Decades to Come’

People’s resistance is assuming even more importance in such times. You’ve always talked, even today, on the importance of peaceful andolans (movements). Does the recent victory of the farmers’ protests give you hope for the future of peoples’ movements across India?

Yes, certainly. It has very clearly put peoples’ movements and peoples’ politics on the political agenda, by repealing Acts [the three farm laws] which were forcibly and fraudulently passed in the Parliament without discussion and debate. But it was not easy to compel Prime Minister Modi, who is so much in partnership with corporates, to repeal these acts. They are still parallelly promoting the corporates’ entry into agriculture and food storage. They are bringing in Microsoft, and other agencies, into land records. They’ve given them the contracts; silos are already built by Adani. It is going on. They will push. We will have to become watchdogs in this situation.

But these three Acts would have given them a huge promotion and entry. But [resisting these acts] could happen only because it was a peoples’ movement. If it was a political party alliance, it would not have continued for more than a year. There was unity and solidarity between the 550 organisations involved. In every state there was a response to the appeal by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha. So it was a national movement and after all the accusations, defamation, false case filing, they had to go back on their steps.

So I think the peoples’ movement is now respected by the country.

India is on a dam-building spree. Including building big dams, like the Dibang Etalin project, at a time when other countries are decommissioning, tearing down theirs. Do big dams have space in India’s development paradigm? Can we work around this?

A thousand dams have been decommissioned by the US. We followed the Tennessee Valley model of the US and built all these dams. But in 1994, a US department called the Bureau of Reclamations declared a moratorium on large dams. Many European countries have gotten rid of their large dams and they don’t want large canal structures also because they bring in water logging, salinisation and many other problems in the [the beneficiary area] also.

Our government is still pushing it. But people are not only reacting to big dams, they are reacting to displacement. They realise that when they are displaced from their communities, their natural spaces, ecosystems and sources of livelihood it is not easy. Only in the case of the Sardar Sarovar dam has land been given, even though the policy is the same.

Because of the 36-year-struggle – and from Delhi to Washington and Geneva – 50,000 families have been rehabilitated and 20,000 have got land. So it’s not so easy. And not everyone can fight this battle. So it is better that we promote, and we demand, development without displacement. And it is possible. Decentralised development planning and [using] appropriate technology in water, and resource management will be less energy-intensive, more equitable and just. And that will generate sources of livelihood, not kill them.

It’s Human Rights Day today [December 10]. India’s push for coal for development is infringing on many rights, including those of the Gond people in the Hasdeo Aranya in Chhattisgarh. Despite resistance – a 300 km march involving more than 250 adivasis – the Centre approved coal-mining in the Parsa coal block by giving it final forest clearance. There are allegations that gram sabha clearances were forged. In many senses, this was much more than just a local struggle. But the government hasn’t heeded.

This is not expected of the [Bhupesh] Baghel government, not only as a secular party but a party that has always had a dialogue with the people. Adivasis in the state expected that their consent would be made a condition but that has not been happening, unfortunately. So people are compelled to take to struggles.

Oriyas are very well-known for perseverant struggles. I’ve seen so many of their struggles: the POSCO struggle, Kashipur struggle, Koraput struggle… The role of various organisations, not just political parties and their fronts, also matter a lot.

Watch | Hasdeo Aranya Protests: 10 Long Years of Resistance Explained

It’s been more than three decades of campaigning, and taking up numerous social and environmental rights issues and fights. Do you see any change in people or in perspectives?

Consumerism has developed, so there’s marketisation, commodification. Individualisation is also another kind of privatisation. Instead of taking forward social clauses and social commitment, people are looking at their own individual vested interests, following their lifestyles towards that end.

But there are youth coming forward. We are falling short on motivating youths to take up the social cause, not just careerism. And there is a change in the state’s response which is why people feel what is the point in approaching the state governments [for redressal], kuch nahi milta hai (‘You don’t get anything’).

You touched on the role of women in campaigns. How important is this?

Very important. They bring in perseverance, they bring in a different idiom, not just a different medium. They bring in so many emotions, the stories they say can touch your heart. It’s very difficult – for the government, for the World Bank, any agency – to reply to them, respond to them.

Once, at the farmer’s protests, it started raining heavily. Most men took shelter but the women remained there, not budging. It was so good to see women at the forefront of the protest against the K-rail project today, raising slogans. That is one thing we have learnt from the Narmada andolan too, the role that women can play in this.

You talked of corporatisation, globalisation and privatisation as being the “worst kind of virus” today. And almost every big development project we see smacks of these in varying degrees. Even K-rail, as you pointed out.

The K-rail project is an example of that. Democratisation and prioritisation are necessary while planning any developmental activity. The farmers’ protests have left us with the message that amidst the awfully fascist situation we are experiencing in this country – which is corporatisation-based, consumerism-based, corruption-based and commodification-based – we have to fight with peoples’ movements and peoples’ politics and nothing less than that.

The victory of the farmers really shows that we have to rise beyond the party lines. The line that can only be drawn should be between development and destruction, and nothing else.

Ken-Betwa River Linking Project May be Economically Unviable, Says SC Committee

The apex court says that sustainable and cost-effective alternatives should have been considered before this project.

India’s first inter-state river interlinking project has hit a roadblock with a Supreme Court committee questioning the basis on which wildlife clearance was granted to it.

Punching holes in the green clearances given to the Ken-Betwa Link Project (KBLP) by the Indian government’s environment ministry, the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) of the Supreme Court of India has raised questions about the basic viability of the project. The KBLP, proposed across Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, envisages a transfer of surplus water from river Ken’s basin to river Betwa’s basin to provide water in areas in the upper Betwa basin that are facing water shortage.

The CEC’s report came in an ongoing case in the Supreme Court regarding the wildlife clearance granted to the KBLP Phase-I by the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (SC-NBWL). The report was submitted to the apex court on August 30, 2019.

The CEC’s report raised fundamental questions not only about the appropriateness of the wildlife clearance given to the Ken-Betwa project but also its viability, optimality and desirability, said Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), a network of organisations and individuals working on issues related to the water sector, specifically associated to large dams. “This a massive setback for the Ken-Betwa project. We hope the government wakes up to the reality and shelves the project and immediately goes for more viable, quicker, cost-effective and less damaging options for Bundelkhand,” said Thakkar.

Decades of pursuing river linking

The Rs. 280 billion project involves the construction of a 77 metre high and 2,031 m long composite dam across river Ken near village Daudhan in Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh. Once completed, in an estimated nine years, the dam is expected to provide irrigation facility to 606,980 hectares area, drinking water facility for 1.4 million (14 lakh) people and generation of 78-megawatt hydropower. Water will be transferred through a 221-kilometre long Ken-Betwa Link Canal Phase-l which will be constructed along the left bank of the river Ken.

The project is also expected to result in submergence of over 9,000 hectares of area and out of that 5,803 hectares is in the Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR).

The plan to link India’s rivers is not new. In 1980, a National Perspective Plan (NPP) was prepared by the then Ministry of Irrigation (now Ministry of Jal Shakti) for water resources development through the inter-basin transfer of water, by transferring water from water surplus basins to water-deficit basins.

“Under the NPP, the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) has identified 30 links (16 under the peninsular component and 14 under Himalayan component) for preparation of feasibility reports. KBLP is one among those 30 identified links,” said the Minister of State for Jal Shakti & Social Justice and Empowerment Rattan Lal Kataria while replying to a query in Parliament in July 2019. “Various statutory clearances except stage-II forest clearance and clearance from the CEC of Supreme Court have been accorded for components under KBLP Phase-I. The clearances for the projects proposed under KBLP Phase-II are in advanced stages.”

Subsequently, in February 2012, the Supreme Court of India ruled that the river interlinking programmes are in the national interest and directed the central government to pursue it. It had directed the central government to form a special committee for interlinking of rivers to take up the Ken-Betwa linking project, for which a detailed project report was ready, for implementation at the first instance.

Since 2014, the Narendra Modi government has been seriously pursuing the river linking project. Before the 2019 elections for India’s parliament, Bharatiya Janata Party in its manifesto had talked about expediting the river interlinking project to ensure the solution to problems of drinking water and irrigation. BJP had promised to constitute an authority to work on this project.

After winning the 2019 elections and coming back to power, PM merged all water-related departments to form the Jal Shakti ministry. Gajendra Singh Shekhawat after taking over as the new water minister of the country had also spoken about pursuing the river interlinking project.

CEC finds loopholes in clearance

The wildlife clearance to the Ken-Betwa project was first discussed during the meeting of NBWL’s standing committee (SC) in February 2016 when it was decided that a (sub) committee comprising of experts would conduct a site visit and submit a report. The sub-committee submitted its report in May 2016 and the project was discussed in standing committee’s meeting in August 2016 wherein the project was recommended clearance.

Now, the CEC in its recent report has held that “there is a wide divergence in the observations made by the (sub) Committee constituted by the SC NBWL and the recommendations on mitigative measures ultimately made by the SC NBWL. In fact, the SC NBWL has not given due consideration to the critical observations of the Committee of SC NBWL while considering the proposal for wildlife clearance submitted by NWDA (National Water Development Agency).”

Among the discrepancies, the CEC noted that alternatives to meet the objectives of KBLP have not been examined. “The projection of availability of surplus water in Ken basin for transfer to Betwa basin without first exhausting possibilities for the development of irrigation facilities in upper Ken basin appears to be premature particularly considering that an investment of Rs 280 billion (Rs 28,000 crores) of public fund is involved,” said the CEC report.

It also held that the primary objective of the KBLP of providing irrigation facilities and alleviating poverty can be achieved through alternative methods of water conservation/harvesting at the local level and that too at a much cheaper cost.

Analysing the cost-benefit of the project, the CEC report noted that the costs of implementation of the landscape management plan for tiger conservation and the species recovery programme for vultures and ghariyal (Gavial) are yet to be worked out and once included in cost-benefit analysis, could make the project economically unviable.

Ghariyal Photo: Flickr

The CEC also observed that the Daudhan Dam would restrict the wildlife corridor in the Panna Tiger Reserve for movement of animals.

There is a visible disconnect between the information about river linking in national media and the information available to the communities that will be impacted, noted river researcher and activist Siddharth Agarwal. “We spent about a month and a half, walking along the Ken, documenting the river and the riparian community. There was a lot of talk about the river and river-linking in the national media, but we were shocked to observe the absence of information in the local region. Most people living in villages along the Ken had absolutely no idea that such a project had been proposed to alter the landscape that they inhabit,” Agarwal told Mongabay-India.

He explained that river Ken’s catchment has been anthropogenically transformed, but the upper catchment seemed to be comparatively lesser modernised in respect of roads, electricity and chemical farming.

“Even stretches that did not form part of a national park or protected area retained some of their native features. We even noticed wild animals and birds in substantially higher numbers, with reports of more sightings by the locals – though most lands had been brought under cultivation, he said. “However, even this limited change has severely impacted the river and groundwater levels. As anthropogenic pressure increases, the proposed project promises to worsen the situation by taking away large swathes of forests from this troubled region, while also challenging the first rights to the river of those living upstream,” said Agarwal.

Project will severely impact wildlife

The Panna Tiger Reserve is home to the critically endangered vulture and ghariyal (long-snouted) as well as several threatened wildlife species like tigers, leopard, rusty-spotted cat, sloth bear, wild dog, chausinga (four-horned antelope), mugger crocodile as well as Mahasheer fish and several species of raptors. Other wildlife like wolves, chinkara, striped hyena, jungle cat, civets, jackal, fox, nilgai, chital, sambar, wild pig, common langur and monkeys are also found in the area.

During the SC-NBWL’s meeting in August 2016 when the project got a go-ahead, the National Tiger Conservation Authority had expressed concern about the loss of 105 square kilometres of tiger habitat because of submergence and fragmentation and recommended to integrate three wildlife sanctuaries – Nauradehi, Rani Durgawati and Ranipur – with the Panna tiger reserve.

“All the three WLS proposed above for integration with PTR do not have secure corridor/habitat connectivity with PTR,” said the CEC report, noting that the proposed connectivity of the PTR to the three sanctuaries mostly pass through densely populated and cultivated areas.

The CEC added that the Ken-Betwa project will destroy the most successful tiger reintroduction programme launched in PTR.

Also read: The Four Ways in Which India’s Water Blessings Are Turning Into Disasters

As per CEC, the mitigative measures suggested by NTCA and the NBWL’s standing committee “do not address the loss of the special and unique ecosystem of gorges, rocky cliffs and riverine flora and fauna on either bank of the river Ken.” It said that the wildlife including microflora and fauna which have evolved in this ecosystem will, on commissioning of the project, perish forever.

“The SC NBWL has failed to appreciate the fact that more than 4,400 hectares of the core of the Panna National Park will get submerged on the execution of the project. The national parks are the geographical areas on earth surface having unique floral, faunal and morphological significance and are areas set apart for the evolution process to proceed unhindered by human interference. Shifting of national park boundaries will result in disruption and disappearance of millions of years of evolution progressing in the unique ecosystem along river Ken especially in gorges, caves and cliffs” CEC emphasised.

The CEC emphasised that the PTR is a national park and has been notified for the protection and conservation of the entire ecosystem including all plants and animals and not just tigers. It said the project in the present form does not take into account the loss of vulture, ghariyal and other flora that will occur due to the project. It has all the features of a mega hydel project within the national park and tiger reserve and lacks any feature of a river-linking project.

“lt, therefore, poses a serious challenge to the very objective of the legislature in enacting the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 to provide protection to the wildlife and the ecosystem in which they co-exist,” said CEC.

“Further cutting of about 23 lakh trees from a national park is no mean loss. No amount of compensatory planting can recreate existing riverine and forest ecosystems,” it said.

Noted environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta stressed that the CEC report highlights the disastrous impact of the project.

Panna National Park. Photo: Flickr

“The CEC report clearly establishes that it is not only ecologically disastrous to destroy 104 square kilometres of Panna National Park, but the fact that such an activity is not permissible under the provisions of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. The project was approved by the NBWL, despite the fact that it had no jurisdiction to even consider the project. In addition, the CEC has said that the project will not solve the water problem of Bundelkhand at all. Importantly, the CEC has clearly held that the damage will be irreversible in nature,” Dutta told Mongabay-India.

In its report, the CEC noted that during the monsoon, the flow of water with silt is essential for the survival of the (Ken) Ghariyal Sanctuary located downstream of proposed Daudhan Dam.

It explained that the ecological flow of water from the dam will not be carrying any silt because the water which is being released downstream is only after sedimentation of silt within the reservoir.

“The massive engineering structure of the dam is bound to isolate the upstream aquatic fauna of Panna National Park and this may have a direct impact on the breeding habits of aquatic life forms both upstream and downstream of the dam. The construction of the dam will result in substratum and which in turn will result in the drastic conversion of aquatic habitat thereby changing the whole ecosystem within the Panna National Park as well as downstream of the dam,” said CEC while warning that this situation may lead to “extinction of many aquatic forms of life.”

CEC recommended that “considering the precautionary principle, a detailed study on the impact of the proposed KBLP on the long term conservation interest of Panna National park and Panna tiger reserve is undertaken” before the project is approved for implementation. It noted that the study shall examine and report whether the mitigative measures now proposed effectively offset the adverse impact of the project on the unique ecosystem of Panna National park and Panna tiger reserve.

It also recommended that the alternatives to meet the objectives of the proposed Ken-Betwa project are examined through specialised agencies having expertise including in arid zone agriculture, soil and water conservation.

However, Himanshu Thakkar of SANDRP said that the “findings of the CEC, warranted stronger recommendations for the project, its environmental impact assessment and hydrological assessment, for NBWL, NTCA and for the environment ministry and its environment and forest (clearance) appraisal process.”

“We hope that the official agencies do not use CEC’s recommendations as a route to justify the unjustifiable Ken-Betwa project,” Thakkar said.

The article was originally published on Mongabay India. You can read it here.