As the ambitious project of linking ken and Betwa moved into the final stages of environmental clearances, anti-dam people’s movement is taking root in Panna, the district that will bear most of the ‘cost’. About 7.2 lakh trees and a huge 90sq km area of Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR) may be submerged in water due to the Ken-Betwa river-linking (KBRL) project, which is expected to provide drinking water supply for 13.42 lakh people and help irrigate 6.75 lakh hectares of land in the poverty-ridden Bundelkhand region. In June, a group of a hundred-odd people submitted a clutch of petitions to the Panna district collector raising various concerns about the project. The petitioners, part of the newly formed Panna Vikas Manch (PVM), were led by the soft-spoken Dilhar Kumari, the titular rajmata of the erstwhile Panna princely state. The delegation included politicians from the BJP and the Congress, residents of Panna town and a new class of green activists, beneficiaries of the trickle-down effects in the local economy from the revival of the tiger population in the Panna national park. There will be an “irreversible” loss of breeding sites for wild animals after submergence of critical and specialized habitats under the proposed project, which is likely to cost over Rs.9,000cr. Under the KBRL project, a 73.8-metre-high dam is proposed to be constructed on the Ken river at Daudhan in chhatarpur district. The dam will transfer excess water from the Ken to the Betwa through a canal and will irrigate areas in the Tikamgarh and Chhatarpur districts of Madhya Pradesh and Jhansi and Hamirpur districts of Uttar Pradesh. The dam will submerge about 90 sq km of land, of which about 61 sq km will be critical tiger breeding habitat in the 543-sq-km PTR. Meanwhile, while the dam comes up, water availability downstream in Panna district will be affected.