Congress expresses concern over Ken-Betwa project’s impact on environment, Samajwadi Party takes credit for it

Former Environment Minister and Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said the inauguration of the project was one more evidence of the difference between Narendra Modi’s ‘talk’ and ‘walk’ on environment and forest matters. File
| Photo Credit: ANI

The Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) – allies in the Opposition INDIA bloc – took diametrically opposite views on the Ken-Betwa river linking project on Wednesday (December 25, 2024). While the Congress described the project as “another proof” of the difference between Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “talk and walk” on the environment, the SP sought to take credit for conceptualising it.

Laying the foundation stone of the Ken-Betwa project at Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh, the Prime Minister said the project would open new doors of prosperity and happiness in the Bundelkhand region.

However, former Environment Minister and Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, in a post on X, said the inauguration of the project was “one more evidence of the difference between his [Mr. Modi] ‘talk’ and ‘walk’ on environment and forest matters”.

“The Ken-Betwa river linking project for which he is laying the foundation stone today poses a serious threat to the biodiversity-rich Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh. Panna is the most remarkable success story of revival as by early 2009, its tiger population had been completely wiped out. Thanks to the tiger reintroduction programme launched 15 years ago – India’s first – presently Panna has around 90-plus tigers, including cubs and sub-adults, and is thriving with sustainable tourism-based livelihoods,” Mr. Ramesh wrote.

Factories in tiger habitat

The project would submerge over 10 per cent of the core area of the tiger reserve, he said. “Not only prime tiger habitats, but also those of other species like vultures, will be lost. The ecosystem will be bifurcated. More than 23 lakh trees are to be felled. Construction activities will be a severe disturbance,” Mr. Ramesh added.

He claimed that three cement factories were being planned, and one had already been commissioned in the vicinity of the park. “What is unfortunate is that there are alternatives for executing the project (like locating the dam upstream) without causing such extensive ecological damage,” the Congress leader said.

Taking a completely different stance on the project, SP president and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said his father, the late Mulayam Singh Yadav, had conceptualised the project with the view that “linking rivers is akin to linking the country” and had got into an understanding with Madhya Pradesh.

He shared a photo of his father signing a memorandum of understanding of the Ken-Betwa linking project with the then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh [Babulal Gaur] and presenting it to the then Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.

“The larger vision behind this project was to increase self-reliance and prevent migration by providing adequate water for irrigation, drinking and producing electricity as well as improving the water level of drought-prone Bundelkhand…,”Mr Yadav said in a post on X.

Had the present Central government prioritised this project, “this great work of Netaji [Mulayam] would have started earlier and would have been completed by now”, he added.