Water bodies, rajakaluve lands worth Rs 1.77L crore encroached: Speaker

There are 1,547 lakes, 1,256 ponds in B'luru Urban, Rural districts

Legislative Assembly Speaker K B Koliwad on Wednesday said that 12,544 acres of lake, pond and rajakaluve area, whose value has been estimated to be  Rs 1.77 lakh crore, have been encroached upon.

Koliwad, who is the chairperson of the House committee on lake encroachment, told reporters that there are 1,547 lakes in Bengaluru Urban and Rural districts, whose total extent is 57,932 acres. Of this, an area of 10,787 acres has been encroached upon. The land value of this is estimated to be 1.5 lakh crore.

Likewise, 1,256 acres of pond area (worth Rs 16,500 crore) and 501 acres of rajakaluve area (worth Rs 11,000 crore) too have been encroached upon, he said.

Koliwad said 1,14,988 properties had encroached upon the lake buffer zone in Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) limits. The authorities have estimated the property value to be Rs 11,498 crore. Koliwad said that this was merely a conservative estimate.

It has also been ascertained that 1,34,786 properties have encroached upon rajakaluve buffer zone in BBMP limits. The estimated property value is Rs 13,479 crore.

The Committee has not taken into consideration the National Green Tribunal’s (NGT) order fixing the buffer zone limit. The NGT has said that 75 metres from the edge of the water body should be considered as buffer zone. “I had also passed an order to this effect. But, when the matter was referred to the Law department, the committee was advised that the NGT order is ‘prospective’ and not ‘retrospective’. Hence, I had to withdraw the order. We have considered the buffer zone to be only 30 metres from the water body, like it was earlier,” the Speaker added.

Koliwad did not disclose details pertaining to the encroachers. He, however, said that both government and private parties had rampantly encroached upon the water bodies and their buffer zones. The type of encroachments varies from a high-rise building to a hutment.

Punishment

Koliwad said that his committee would recommend the government to initiate criminal action against builders as well as officials who gave permission for constructing buildings on the water bodies. “The committee will recommend that encroachers should serve a jail term, and that their private properties should be confiscated.”

He said that the committee would submit a detailed report on lake encroachment to the government in December. Details pertaining to encroachments in the buffer zones of lakes and rajakaluves will be submitted in the next two to three months. The committee was constituted on October 27, 2014.