The Ministry of Jal Shakti held the third meeting of the steering committee of the Ken-Betwa link project at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on January 18, 2023. The meeting was chaired by the Secretary, Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Ministry of Jal Shakti. It was attended by state representatives of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and officials of various central ministries and NitiAayog.
According to the Secretary, DoWR, RD & GR, MoJS, the Ken-Betwa link project is a flagship project of the centre and state, which is critical for water security and socio-economic development of the Bundelkhand region. He further added that the government is aiming to implement the project in a time-bound manner using state-of-the-art technologies and know-how, taking care of the Resettlement & Rehabilitation (R&R) of the affected villages and conservation of the area, especially the landscape-dependent species of Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR)
The state government has given approval for bringing them two wildlife sanctuaries, Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary and Rani Durgawati Wildlife Sanctuary of Madhya Pradesh and Ranipur Wildlife Sanctuary of UP, under project Tiger, which will help increase the carrying capacity of PTR.
The committee was notified that the state government had issued orders to transfer around 5480 hectares of non-forest land of Panna and Chhattarpur district for transfer to PTR for compensatory afforestation.
A proposal was made during the meeting for forming an R&R Committee to monitor the implementation of the R&R plan in a transparent and time-bound manner. A decision was also made on constituting a Greater Panna Landscape council for implementing the Landscape Management Plan (LMP) and Environment Management Plan (EMP) of the project.
