It took government push over the last few weeks for the Rs 44,605-crore Ken-Betwa Link Project (KBLP) to secure the final forest clearance, six years after it got the provisional nod, and just in time for the upcoming Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh. However, the project’s wildlife clearance is under examination at the Supreme Court and it may still require a fresh environmental clearance before work can take off. Two key forest clearance conditions require KBLP to realign its canal and shift the proposed powerhouses from diverted forest land. Facing strong anti-incumbency in OBC-dominated Bundelkhand, where Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge kicked off his pre-election campaign this August promising a caste census, the BJP is hoping to cash in on the mega irrigation project, touted to end the water shortage in the drought-prone region. What makes the party doubly hopeful, say insiders, is that the Congress cannot claim any “legacy credit” as the project is associated with former prime minister A B Vajpayee, who set it rolling in 1999. Underlining that KBLP will irrigate 10.6 lakh hectares of land besides providing drinking water to 62 lakh people in Bundelkhand, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said in a video message on Wednesday: “The Congress did nothing for this region. They only stalled the project.” In 2011, the UPA-II government had rejected KBLP for its high environmental cost. But it was revived and granted wildlife, environmental and in-principle forest clearances in 2016-2017, under the Modi government. Even as it struggled to meet preconditions for the final forest clearance, the Union Cabinet approved the project in December 2021, with an eight-year deadline. As recently as July 24, records show, KBLP reiterated its plea for partial exemption from meeting a key condition for the final forest clearance: compensation for the diversion of 60.17 sq km of forest land, by adding an equal extent of revenue or private land to the Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR). This position has been repeated several times since July 2018, when the Ministry of Jal Shakti told the Environment Ministry that Madhya Pradesh could identify only 42.06 sq km of revenue land, and that it may consider “double of the remaining 18.11 sq km, i.e. 36.22 sq km, of degraded forest land” to meet the 60.17 sq km commitment. By the end of July, say sources in the Ministry of Jal Shakti and the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department, “a message was conveyed” and a “hard deadline” was set, “given the limited window” available before the state went to polls. On September 22, noting that “the transfer and mutation of only 3,414.757 ha non-forest land” was done against the requirement of 6017 ha, the Environment Ministry sought clarifications from the state on the remaining 2,792.662 ha. On September 29, the state Forest Department replied that a “total 6,809 ha non-forest land has been identified” with a “cushion of around 792 ha. for future requirement”. In addition to 3,414.757 ha, it said, 1,486.513 ha of government non-forest land has been allotted and mutated in favour of PTR on September 28. Further, the Forest Department said, 1,298 ha of private land in the Chhatarpur and Panna districts has been awarded by the Collector, and payment of compensation to the landowners and mutation in favour of PTR was under process. Of the 18 villages where such private land will be acquired, records show, 10 were finalised on September 22. On October 3, the Environment Ministry issued the final forest clearance. It was a lucky day for Madhya Pradesh and Bundelkhand, said the CM in his video message. Conceived to divert water from the Ken basin to the Betwa basin for meeting irrigation needs and providing drinking water, KBLP requires a total 60.17 sq km of forest land, including 41.41 sq km of PTR. The total loss of 105 sq km of wildlife habitat to submergence and fragmentation will particularly impact endangered vultures, gharials and tigers. H S Mohanta, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Land Management) of Madhya Pradesh, told The Indian Express: “This (selection of villages) was in the works since 2018 but everything came together in the last few weeks. The process of compensating the land owners and transferring the land will be handled by the Revenue Department, along with the project proponent, and should not take too long.” Mohanta said the project work could commence, adding that the forest clearance conditions bar “closure of dam gates and impounding of water” until all the revenue villages are relocated. KBLP has given an undertaking that “the state government and the user agency shall ensure that the canal should be realigned to minimise the use of forest land for construction”, under a forest clearance condition. Stopping short of a similar undertaking on the condition regarding the proposed power plants, KBLP has “agreed” that the powerhouses, “which have the capacity of 78 MW, shall not be constructed in the forest area to be diverted, to avoid constant disturbance in PTR”. The red flags These changes, experts say, amount to a change of scope of the project and will require a fresh environment clearance. “A general environment clearance condition requires any major change in the scope of a project to be reported to the ministry and approved afresh,” said a former member of one of the Expert Appraisal Committees of the Environment Ministry. “Power is a minor component (of the project) and the powerhouses concerned are not part of the immediate scope of (project) work. I believe the canal is already aligned in a way that uses minimal forest land, but we will look into it for the best possible option,” Bhopal Singh, Director General of the National Water Development Agency under the Jal Shakti Ministry, said, when contacted. Incidentally, the Supreme Court is yet to decide on its Central Empowered Committee’s 2019 report that sought thorough studies on the impact of KBLP, saying it “poses a serious challenge” to the very objective of wildlife and forest laws. But, a state forest official argues, there is no stay order against the project either. The Madhya Pradesh government is also supposed to carry out a fresh enumeration of trees to be felled for KBLP because the original estimation of 23 lakh trees excluded those with girth between 10 cm and 20 cm, even though most would grow to above 20-cm diameter class by the time they would be felled in seven-eight years. That recount is pending.
