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Ken-Betwa river linking: Nitin Gadkari to sit down with Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Adityanath to break deadlock

At the heart of the impasse is MP government's decision to withhold their NOC, which is mandatory for the project work to begin.

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Nitin Gadkari and Shivraj Singh Chouhan
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The resolution of a deadlock between Madhya Pradesh government and Centre on the Ken- Betwa river linking project over MP’s fresh demands to widen the scope of the project is going to be the foremost priorities of Nitin Gadkari, who took charge of Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) from Uma Bharti on Monday. Gadkari is going to soon sit down with Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath to sort out the impasse over the project, highly placed sources said.

At the heart of the impasse is Madhya Pradesh government's decision to withhold their no-objection certificate (NOC), which is mandatory for the project work to begin. The Chouhan-led MP government wants MoWR to include Kotha barrage, Lower Orr and Bina complex irrigation projects in Phase-I of the Ken-Betwa link. As per the original plans of the National Water Development Agency, these projects will be executed in Phase-II of the interlinking of rivers. Additionally, the MP government has also demanded a reworking of the original 2005 water sharing agreement with UP.

The MP government escalated the issue and wrote to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to consider their demands.  

"The demand to include projects from a later stage in Phase-I will upset the entire project as the primary phase itself has not taken off. These projects are also yet to be appraised for central clearances,”sources from MoWR said.

Besides the pending NOC from MP, the project has not received the final environmental clearance and clearance for the forest diversion. Also, the wildlife clearance granted by the National Board for Wildlife is being scrutinized by the Supreme Court’s Centrally Empowered Committee, sources said.  

Conceived under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA-I government, the Rs.18,000 crore Ken-Betwa river linking project aims to transfer water from the Ken river basin in Madhya Pradesh to Betwa river basin in Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh for irrigating over 6 lakh hectares of farmland. The project has faced bitter criticism from country’s leading environmentalists and even hydrologists as the project involves construction of Daudham dam inside the core area of Panna Tiger reserve. A total of nearly 10,000 hectares of forest would be lost including over 5,000 hectares from Panna tiger reserve core area.

The tiger reserve is home to more than 30 tigers, leopards, sloth bears, endangered vultures and a dense forest.

 

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