A company that spent crores rejuvenating a waterbody in Hebbagodi is facing cost escalations because local authorities failed to remove encroachments.
The news comes amid plans by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and the Minor Irrigation Department to rejuvenate more than 10 lakes with CSR funds.
Titan Company Limited had inked an agreement with Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) to virtually bring back the Veerasandra Lake from extinction.
In fact, the lake limped towards a certain death as sewage from Electronics City began entering its feeder canals that once replenished it with stormwater. It also choked over piles of construction debris dumped ever so freely in its periphery.
Of the 17 acre 6 gunta area of the lake, nearly 14 guntas have been encroached upon, while the government paved roads on 3 acres and 17 guntas. This was when the company began rejuvenating the lake in 2018.
“They wanted to complete the entire work by September 2019,” said a senior BMRCL official. “About 70,000 cubic metres of silt was removed from the lake bed, increasing its capacity from 90 MLD to 140 MLD.”
The work, however, has been stalling for the past five months as encroachers of the lake began intimidating the contractor hired by the company. “They threatened to burn down the contractor’s vehicle and arm-twisted him into widening the road on the lake bund,” the official said.
City municipal council officials snuffed out any faint hope of the work starting again, as they wrote to the deputy commissioner, asking to build another road on the lake’s western bund. This would violate the Revised Master Plan-2015 and the National Green Tribunal ruling that want the ‘buffer zone’ area around the lake to be left untouched.
Bad politics
Sources said local politics had hurt the lake’s rejuvenation. “The overall cost of the work is likely to escalate by Rs 2 crore. The district administration is unable to resolve the issue. We are afraid this might discourage other companies from taking up lake rejuvenation,” the official said.
To a question, BMRCL managing director Ajay Seth admitted to the complexities in developing the lake. “BMRCL has written to the officials to help clear the hurdles. We hope the issues will be ironed out,” Seth said.
The issue has come at a time the minor irrigation department is wooing CSR investment in rejuvenating six lakes, while the BBMP hopes to get corporate funds to develop
12 lakes.
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