The 'Silent Valley Movement' in the late 1970s and 1980s was primarily launched to protect a tropical evergreen forest from being submerged by a proposed hydroelectric dam on which river?

💡 Solution & Explanation

The Silent Valley environmental movement centered on protecting an untouched tropical evergreen forest in the Palakkad district of Kerala from being submerged by a hydroelectric project planned across the Kunti Puzha river. Other river choices mentioned in distractors flow through different geographical regions of the southern peninsula. This grassroots campaign became a landmark precedent for ecological conservation and public interest litigation in independent India.