The Third Meeting of Steering Committee of Ken-Betwa Link Project (SC-KBLP) was held on January 18 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi under the Chairmanship of Secretary, DoWR, RD & GR, Ministry of Jal Shakti.
Key points
- The Ken-Betwa link project is critical for the water security and socio-economic development of Bundelkhand region.
- It is a flagship project of the Centre and State.
- It was stressed that implementing this project in a time bound manner using state of art technologies and know-how duly taking care of R&R of project affected people and conservation of the region, particularly the landscape dependent species of Panna Tiger Reserve is a responsibility .
- It was intimated to the committee that orders for transfer about 5480 ha non forest govt. land of Panna and Chhattarpur district of M.P. have been issued by state govt. for transfer to PTR for compensatory afforestation.
- In addition to this, two wildlife sanctuaries namely Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary and Rani Durgawati Wildlife Sanctuary of Madhya Pradesh and Ranipur Wildlife Sanctuary of U.P. have been approved by state govt. for bringing them under the project Tiger.
- A Greater Panna Landscape council is also being constituted for implementation of Landscape Management Plan (LMP) and Environment Management Plan (EMP) of the project.
Ken-Betwa inter-linking (KBLP)
- The Union Cabinet had in December 2022 approved the funding and implementation of Ken-Betwa inter-linking (KBLP) of rivers project with a total cost of Rs 44,605 crore.
- The project will be completed in eight years. KBLP is the first project under the National Perspective Plan for interlinking of rivers.
- It envisages transferring water from the Ken river to the Betwa river, both tributaries of the Yamuna. The Ken-Betwa Link Canal will be 221 km long, including a 2-km long tunnel.
