Anatomy of a lake grab: Coffee estate, farmhouse and check dams

A farmhouse and a coffee plantation on lake land and private check dams on a stormwater drain: that’s how a businessman used public property for personal gain, officials say.

On Saturday, officials from the Bengaluru Urban district administration detected what they said were illegalities in survey number 2 at the Kolur Gururayanapura village on the western outskirts of Bengaluru.

Based on the information provided by local residents, officials visited the place on Saturday and found that the lake land was not only encroached upon by a farmhouse but water from the stormwater drain was also diverted to private tanks to run an agriculture industry.

While the farmhouse is sprawled over a hundred acres and has an organic manure plant and a park on premises, lake land was used to build a road between the businessman’s house and the farm. A small coffee plantation also sits on the lake land.

Villagers also showed officials check dams built across the drain to divert water to tanks built on private land.

This has stopped the flow of water to the lakes, drying it up.

Assistant Commissioner M G Shivanna said the drain encroachment, the commercial use of water and commercial activities on agricultural land constituted clear offences.

Questioning the local revenue officials’ failure to check the encroachments, he ordered the jurisdictional tahsildar Ramalakshman to survey the entire land parcel within a week to assess if the businessman owns more land than what rules permit. “If his landholding is found to be disproportionate, the government has the power to seize it,” he said.

4,500 acres encroached upon

The action came weeks after a government survey found that over 4,500 acres of land belonging to 837 lakes in Bengaluru Urban has been encroached upon.

In Yelachaguppe’s Survey Number 132, officials found that a developer converted 12 guntas of lake land into a housing layout. They got an excavator to remove the layout infrastructure.

About 1.04 acres of lake land in Survey Number 5 at Ravugodlu and one acre of lake land in Survey Number 60 at Gonipura were also reclaimed.