The board states that the entire one acre and three gunte is a waterbody (kunte) and that trespassing is prohibited.
Credit: DH Photo
Bengaluru: A day after DH reported on the encroachment of a waterbody in Harlur, located in a fast-developing area in East Bengaluru, the Revenue Department reclaimed the government property on Friday by installing a board.
The board stated that the entire one acre and three gunte is a waterbody (kunte) and that trespassing is prohibited.
The action followed a DH report exposing the encroachment, where people had been flattening the area by dumping debris for six months. There were claims a builder was attempting to grab the land for construction.
The land lies in Survey Number 24 of Ambalipura village, Varthur Hobli. Revenue records show it is government land and marked as ‘Sarkari kunte’ (pond). On one side, the waterbody is lined with trees and on the other is Harlur main road. The land is worth over Rs 60 crore at current market value.
After DH published the report, revenue officials visited the site to reclaim the property and promised to fence it to prevent further encroachment.
A revenue official said they could not identify the encroachers, as the site was being used by taxi drivers to park their vehicles. “We did not identify the vehicles that were used to dump the debris,” the officer told DH. He promised to hand over the land to the Lake Development Authority.
Several truckloads of debris were dumped in the ‘kunte'.