JOIN US'MoEF nod must for land use change around wetlands'
Dealing a blow to the realty sector in the state, the recent National Green Tribunal (NGT) order mandates builders and developers to seek approval of the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) for diverting land use for their lake side projects involving wetland.
G Vidyasagar, Chief Executive Officer of the newly-formed Karnataka Lake Conservation and Development Authority (KLCDA), told Deccan Herald that the NGT in its May 4, 2016 order has directed the state government to submit a proposal for demarcating wetlands. The NGT order said the state should submit the proposal to the MoEF within four weeks from the date of passing the order and the Ministry will consider it in accordance with law and grant its approval. The state can issue notification notifying such areas only after the MoEF approval. “If the wetland notification happens, landlords will have to approach the MoEF for any change in the land use pattern,” he said.
As the KLCDA was not in place till recently, the state government could not submit the proposal within in the four-week deadline set by the NGT, official sources said.
Following the NGT order, the KLCDA has started its exercise of surveying all the lakes and their wetland. “As of now, we have surveyed 34 lakes and will finish our work in the next 10 days,” said Vidyasagar.
There are about 33,000 lakes with the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj department, 3,500 with the Minor Irrigation department and about 1,000 in the city corporation limits.
The KLCDA would provide description of all the tanks in the city corporation limits within a year. There are 11 city municipal corporations and, the KLCDA is in charge of them. The city corporations include Bengaluru, Hubballi-Dharwad, Belagavi, Mangaluru and Mysuru. The NGT order was passed following a petition by Namma Bengaluru Foundation, Citizens' Action Forum and many other non-governmental organisations against Mantri Developers' project on Bellandur-Agara lake wetland in Bengaluru. Senior advocate Sajan Poovayya who fought the case on behalf of the NGOs said, “The ramification of the NGT order demarcating buffer zones of lakes and their rajakaluves (feeder canals) will be felt for quite a long time in the realty sector as it has a wide range of aspects which may not have been fully understood yet.”
Besides redefining the buffer zones of lakes and rajakaluves, the order asks the government to identify wetlands too, Poovayya added.