At Bengaluru's Jarakabande Kaval, lake disappears from the face of the earth

Jarakabande Lake, once the refuge of animals in the eponymous reserve forest situated in northern Bengaluru, does not exist anymore.

And the credit for this goes to the Revenue Department's ingenious officials who split the six-acre lake land — valued at nearly Rs 100 crore — into four parts and doled it out to various individuals.

In the past three years, Forest Department officials made representations to several government agencies, including the Karnataka Tank Conservation and Development Authority (KTCDA) and the Revenue Department, to restore the lake land but to no avail.

In 1988, the government handed over 115 city lakes to the Forest Department but took back all except five in 2010. Jarakabande Lake, spread over five acres and 36 guntas on the edge of Jarakabande Reserve Forest, was among the five lakes whose custodianship was not taken out of the department.

The lake was part of Survey Number 101, which is spread over 59 acres and 25 guntas, in JB Kaval, Yelahanka. In 2013, officials said, revenue (RTC) records were "tampered with" when the state government and the Forest Department were omitted from the mutation records as the owner and custodian, respectively, in columns 9 and 11.

"As per the Revenue Act, no lake land can be given to private parties. And it should not be used for any purpose other than storing water or as a wetland," a forest officer told DH and called for punishing the revenue officer responsible for the scam under section 31 of the Karnataka Tank Conservation and Development Authority Act.

Another official who dug up the history of Jarakabande Lake said it was a classic case of land-grab. "There are many such cases in South Bengaluru. Revenue records were changed in a fraudulent manner, and the lake bed or buffer zone was turned into a housing layout with luxury plots,” he said.

A senior official in the KTCDA said they had been writing to the Bengaluru Urban deputy commissioner for the last two years requesting that the records be set right.

"We raised the issue at a meeting of the state-level apex committee as well. The committee has directed the district revenue officials to set the record straight," the official told this newspaper.

Bengaluru Urban Deputy Commissioner J Manjunath, who has launched encroachment clearance drives in recent times, said that the lake land had been marked as 'B' Kharab in private land. "The issue has to be examined in detail and only then can we take action. I have directed the tahsildar to look into it," he said.

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