JD(S) thwarts BJP’s plans to defeat amendment to bill on lakes in Karnataka

Bengaluru: BJP’s plans to get the Karnataka Tank Conservation and Development Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2025 defeated in the Council on Wednesday were foiled owing to lack of support from alliance partner JD(S), members of which spoke in favour of the legislation.

Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Council and senior BJP leader Chalavadi T Narayanaswamy, former minister C T Ravi, N Ravi Kumar, Hemalatha Nayak led the saffron party’s charge against the bill, expressing reservations over proposed changes to revising the buffer zones for lakes. However, JD(S) MLCs T A Sharavana, Javarayee Gowda and Vivekananda welcomed the bill, much to the BJP’s dismay.

Piloting the bill, passed by the Assembly on Tuesday, Minister for Minor Irrigation N S Boseraju informed the Council that, against the existing provision of fixing the buffer zone of lakes universally at 30m, the amendment proposed calculating the buffer zone of each lake separately, according to its boundaries.

“For lakes equal to or smaller than five guntas, the buffer zone will be 0m, while it will be fixed at 3m for lakes spanning five guntas to one acre; for lakes spread across one to ten acres, the buffer zone will be 6m, 12m for those spread across 10 to 25 acres, and 24m for lakes spanning an area between 25 and 100 acres. For lakes larger than 100 acres, the buffer zone will be 30m. However, we will not cede even one foot in the buffer zone to private entities, and it will be used only for infrastructure development,” said Boseraju.

Chalavadi said that reduction in the area of buffer zones would ultimately destroy the lakes. “Flooding in Bengaluru is largely the consequence of encroachment of lakes. Reducing the buffer zone will only aggravate the problem,” said the LoP.

Chalavadi’s party colleague Ravi, meanwhile, accused the Congress government of coming under pressure from the real estate mafia. “This is in violation of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order that mandates a buffer zone of 50m,” said Ravi, reminding the Congress that the BJP government had not succumbed to pressure from the real estate sector.

Rubbishing Ravi’s claims of ‘suitcases’ from the real estate sector prompting the government’s decisions, Boseraju said, “You may have experience with that, but not us. Also, the NGT cannot dictate the state government.”