Karnataka - Mysore   

Urbanisation taking its toll on ecosystem

MYSORE: Don’t be surprised if in a few years from now Chamundi Hills is described as the city centre. The horizontal expansion of Mysore is taking its toll on the fragile ecosystem, and the vacant land facing the eastern ridge of Chamundi Hill has already been developed and will be allotted as sites to the public in due course.

Once the allocation of sites is complete, it will be a matter of time for other developers to step in to link up with Lalitadripura village, which will complete the grid around Chamundi Hills following which residential areas will crop up along the eastern ridge where there are open spaces that provides an unhindered view of the distant horizons.

And given the growth projections and the estimated rise in the number of industries, creation of additional jobs and spurt in economic activity in the region, the demand for dwellings in and around Mysore is bound to increase. What is more, a few new areas, including Lalitadri Nagar and Vasanthnagar, planned by the Mysore Urban Development Authority (MUDA) will add to the pressures of urbanisation.

The impact of urbanisation will then be reflected in residential localities that are bound to come up around Chamundi Hills.

The Vasanthnagar Layout is located three km from Siddarthanagar Layout and is situated to the North of Mysore-Bannur Road and to the South of Mysore-T. Narsipura Road and covers an area of 139 acres and five guntas and will be a major project that will add to the anthropogenic pressure on Chamundi Hills.

The Lalitadri Nagar is also adjacent to it all of which will link up with Uttarahalli to complete the grid around Chamundi Hills.

Though successive Chief Ministers during their visit to Mysore have proclaimed the “urgency” of protecting Chamundi Hills, nothing has been done to ensure its conservation.

What is more, development pressure, which has been confined to the northern side and western side of Chamundi Hills, is now visible in the southern extremities. It is a matter of time before human settlement comes up along its eastern ridges which for now, is part of the undulating terrain and wilderness.

The only conservation measure of some significance was the notification of 105 acres of land for a heritage park at the foot of Chamundi Hills which is to be developed by the MUDA. Apart from this, there is no effort by the Government to declare a buffer zone around this famous geological entity, which gives Mysore a distinct character. When the then Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy mentioned the need for a two-km greenery around the hills, the Forest Department officials shot of a letter to the Government to conduct a survey and transfer the land for creating a buffer zone and taking up afforestation on a massive scale. But there was no response to it.

While the two km green belt around the hills may be ambitious, the 500 metre buffer zone proposed by environmentalists such as U.N. Ravikumar, formerly of the Centre for Appropriate Rural Technologies, and other citizens, including members of the now-defunct Mysore Agenda Task Force, was reckoned to be more practical and implementable.

A detailed project underlining the imperatives of creating a buffer zone around Chamundi Hills was submitted to the Government more than five years ago.

But it was greeted with a deafening silence and no efforts were made to conserve the area.

Meanwhile, wide spread encroachment has been reported around Chamundi Hills, and the then Heritage Commissioner T.M. Vijaybhaskar ordered an enquiry and a report was submitted but no follow-up action has been initiated to retrieve the land.

In the meantime, the horizontal sprawl of Mysore, which is expected to envelop the eastern ride of Chamundi Hills, is likely to intensify once the doubling of Mysore-Bangalore railway line and the opening of the Mysore airport are completed.

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