Rampant encroachment around Doddakere tank

 
The tank, originally spread on a area of 58 acres has now been reduced to 30 acres. The encroachers have been reducing the tank bed from all the sides. Apart from this, the culprits have also encroached Raja Kaluve through which water flows into the tank.

Though the encroachment is still rampant on the tank bed, the officials of Revenue Department and Town Municipal Council have not bothered to take any action.
According to the survey no 5 and 7 in Karahalli, the tank existed on 58 acres of land. Now one can find 10 to 15 houses, fenced plots, brick kiln and factory, office of a gas agency, sheds, pig sty, nilgiri grove and even a rice mill on 20 to 25 acres of land belonging to tank.

In a classic case of fence eating the crop most of the encroachers are Town Municipal Council workers and elected members.

The encroachers here on the basis of their false documents have obtained permission from Kolar Urban Development Authority to form a layout at the tank bed and have even obtained loan from Karnataka Financial Corporation!

However, Town Municipal Council Executive Officer has said that only 23.25 guntas of  tank had been encroached and the encroached land had been recovered by demolishing the illegal structure by earth moving machines.

Interestingly the Officer has already submitted a  report in this regard to Director, City Development Department on July 13. Legislative Council member Prof S R Leela had raised the issue to Karahalli tank encroachment at the recently concluded session.
The Chief Secretary of the State then in a letter to the tahsildar had demanded information about the action taken against the encroachment.

The tahsildar in turn wrote a letter to TMC Executive Officer seeking information about the documents which were found missing at the taluk office. Hence, based on the report of previous survey, it was ascertained that only 23.25 guntas of land had been encroached in the tank. The 23.25 guntas of land was cleared of the illegal structures to show recovery of land and issue of encroachment was laid to rest.

However, Legislative Council member Prof S R Leela who inspected the tank during her visit to the town recently, found that no action had been taken to clear encroachments apart from the 23.25 guntas of land. She took tahsildar to task for taking any action against the offenders.

It is learnt that tahsildar has taken one month’s time to clear the encroachments. However, little progress has been made in this direction. The inaction by tahsildar has virtually given encroachers a cake walk on the issue.