Govt ignores the best water source - lakes
As the City residents cope with the acute shortage of water that threatens to become worse with the advancing summer, the State government has ignored the most workable solution to the problem - the City’s numerous lakes.
Even the High Court ordering the survey, demarcation and fencing of the 183 lakes does not seem to have woken up the government. The BBMP officers have found that over 286 acres of lake bed area has been encroached in the City, with survey records for another 30-40 lakes missing.
Sources state that most of these missing records are for lakes which are in the outlying areas of the City.
“While lakes have been marked in the old government survey records, they have been converted into residential layouts and sold to private builders,” BBMP officials say.
The total lake area under the BBMP jurisdiction is 5,900 acres, with an additional 1,100 acres with the ‘defunct’ Lake Development Authority (LDA) and the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA).
According to informed sources, at a meeting the Justice N K Patil committee had with the local civic bodies recently, it was observed that the Revenue Department has been lax in surveying all the 183 lakes. The Committee pulled up the surveyors from the Revenue
Department and expressed its ‘dissatisfaction’ with the progress.
Sources state that ‘peeved’ with the lack of interest shown by the surveyors, the Patil committee has now summoned all the revenue inspectors in the City on April 20 for a discussion.
“Encroachments have not been cleared because the local tahsildars do not appear to have issued notices to encroachers,” said sources in the BBMP. Despite such problems, the BBMP says it has cleared encroachments on 100 acres of the lake area.
