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  India   Tigers ‘block’ water to Bundelkhand

Tigers ‘block’ water to Bundelkhand

Published : Jun 25, 2016, 2:06 am IST
Updated : Jun 25, 2016, 2:06 am IST

Fate of the ambitious Ken-Betwa river interlinking project still hangs in the balance over the question of the relocation of a tiger habitat, which shelters a female big cat and her cub, in the core a

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Fate of the ambitious Ken-Betwa river interlinking project still hangs in the balance over the question of the relocation of a tiger habitat, which shelters a female big cat and her cub, in the core area of Panna tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh.

The Rs 9,000 crore-project, the country’s first river interlinking proposal, envisages the establishment of a dam at Daudhan and a 2.5-km canal to transfer surplus water from the Uttar Pradesh section of the Ken river basin to Betwa river in Madhya Pradesh.

The project proposes to irrigate around 7,00,000 hectares in the perennially drought-affected Bundel-khand region in Madhya Pradesh, benefiting around 70 lakh farmers in the area.

The project was denied environment clearance by the UPA government in 2012 on the grounds that it would submerge nearly 4,000 hectares in a core area of Panna tiger reserve that serves as the habitat of one tigress and her cub, besides endangered vultures.

The Madhya Pradesh government has, however, mounted pressure on the Centre to give the go-ahead to the project, assuring that it will relocate the tiger habitat and vulture breeding ground that faces inundation if the project is undertaken.

“The reserve will lose only seven per cent of its core area, and there will be no damage to the area inhabited by vultures,” a senior officer of state water resources department told the Asian Age on Friday.

A team from the National Board of Wildlife recently visited the project site to make a fresh impact-assessment study.

Interestingly, the green body had earlier turned down the project describing that it would be detrimental to the interest of the ever shrinking tiger habitat that led to the decline in the population of the big cats in the reserve from 35 to almost negligible now in the past four decades.

Location: India, Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal