The Madhya Pradesh Police on Sunday morning detained Ken-Betwa protest leader Amit Bhatnagar and several demonstrators from the protest site at Chhatarpur district’s Kupi village, ending a two-week agitation against the Rs 44,605-crore Ken-Betwa Link Project.
The detention came after Bhatnagar had spent 14 days on an indefinite fast, emerging as the face of protests over alleged irregularities in land acquisition, rehabilitation and compensation for families affected by the project.
The Ken-Betwa Link Project, India’s first river-linking project, will transfer water from the Ken River to the Betwa basin through the Daudhan Dam and a network of canals, with the stated aim being to provide irrigation, drinking water and hydropower across Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The project requires the displacement of nearly 2,000 families from villages falling within the reservoir’s submergence, leading to protests.
Several platoons of local police in riot gear landed up at the protest site as Bhatnagar and the protesters kept their distance from the police force by wading into the river, while the police tried to convince them to call off the protests.
Additional SP (Chhatarpur) Aditya Patle told The Indian Express, “Bhatnagar has not been arrested. He was on a fast for two weeks, and taking his health into account, we detained him and took him to the local hospital for treatment.”
Patle said around 150 protesters were detained, packed into buses and sent to Panna district. “Our investigation showed these are not people from the locality but from Panna who had issues with other dam projects. So we detained them and sent them to Panna.”
A social activist who has worked on displacement and rehabilitation issues in Bundelkhand for several years, Bhatnagar has been involved in campaigns related to land acquisition, environmental compliance and the rights of project-affected families. Since July 3, he led the Kupi protest, which has drawn displaced villagers from Daudhan, Palkhua, Sukwaha and neighbouring settlements demanding fresh surveys, correction of compensation records and action on alleged irregularities.
Hours earlier, Bhatnagar points out ‘irregularities’
Hours before his detention, Bhatnagar, visibly frail after two weeks without food, spoke to The Indian Express from a cot under a tarpaulin at the protest site. Too weak to walk on his own, he was often carried by fellow protesters between demonstrations. He paused every few minutes to sip water before resuming conversations with villagers, coordinating the agitation and addressing visitors.
Over the past fortnight, he joined women protesters lying on symbolic funeral cots and helped organise mock funeral pyres to dramatise what demonstrators called the “death” of villages facing submergence under the Daudhan reservoir.
On Saturday, heavy rain lashed the protest site, washing away the symbolic funeral pyres erected by protesters. With waterlogging threatening parts of the encampment, Bhatnagar helped coordinate the movement of women protesters from the flooded area before returning to his cot.
“The government has not been fair and transparent in its land acquisition process. There are many irregularities in the disbursement of compensation,” Bhatnagar told The Indian Express before his detention.
He alleged that the proceedings registers of the Gram Panchayats of Ratiya, Kari, Khatwani, Palkhua, Naiyyapur, Khajuri and Sukwaha contained identical word-for-word entries, while several Gram Sabha meetings were shown as having taken place at 11.30 am on February 17 and 18, 2022, raising questions over the authenticity of the proceedings.
Bhatnagar further alleged that around Rs 11 crore had been sanctioned as compensation for houses in Kharihani village, while documents available with him suggested nearly Rs 8 crore was paid to people who either had no connection with the village or had migrated away decades ago. He also claimed compensation had been sanctioned in the name of a Muslim family, although, according to villagers, no Muslim family ever lived in Kharihani.
90% protesters not project-affected, claims Collector
Chhatarpur Collector Parth Jaiswal rejected the protesters’ allegations, saying most of those participating in the agitation were not directly affected by the Ken-Betwa Link Project. “We have identified 176 names of those participating in the protest. About 10% of them are affected by the Ken-Betwa project. The remaining 90% are not project-affected,” he told The Indian Express.
Rejecting allegations that Gram Sabha proceedings had been fabricated, Jaiswal said “there were no irregularities in the Gram Sabha records”. On claims that compensation had been sanctioned to a Muslim family despite “no such family residing in Kharihani village, he said the family owned fertile agricultural land there and had been compensated for the acquired land, not for residential status in the village”.
Jaiswal said several protesters were raising issues related to other dam projects in neighbouring Panna district, which did not fall under the Chhatarpur administration’s jurisdiction. “Many of them have issues related to other dam projects in Panna district. Those grievances do not fall under the Chhatarpur administration’s jurisdiction. We have shared their details with the Panna administration,” he said, adding that wherever there was a genuine grievance relating to the Ken-Betwa project, the administration was examining it through the prescribed process.
The detention came after Bhatnagar had spent 14 days on an indefinite fast. (Express photo) 
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