A committee to once-in-for-all decide the fate of encroachments has seemingly found a way to bring things back to square one. The ‘comprehensive’ lake report, which was tabled in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday. has placed a series of recommendations, leaving it to the State government to accept and implement.
“There are more than 5,000 encroachers, and it is humanly impossible to pinpoint every encroacher. As a committee, we are only submitting recommendations to the House, and the government could take further action,” said K.B. Koliwad, Chairman of the House committee that produced the report.
For any action to take place, the recommendations can either be issued as individual government orders or through legislation.
However, the recommendations are ambiguous, even for revenue officials who had stopped most encroachment drives until the committee had completed its deliberations.
“About half the encroachments had been removed, while we had left the complicated encroachments, particularly built-up areas. But, even with the report, the lack of clarity continues. Group housing is left out, while there is scope for demolition only if alternative sites are offered, which does not solve much of the problem,” said a senior revenue official.
Democratisation
For activists, however, the legislative committee had brought things ‘back to square one’.
Leo Saldanha of Environment Support Group, which had filed Public Interest Litigations that resulted in the Justice N.K. Patil report on lake protection in 2011, said the legislature report represents a wasted effort when the 2011 report comprehensively dealt with ways of removing encroachments. “The democratisation process mentioned in the N.K. Patil report, to have ward committees themselves protect the lakes, has been sidelined. The legislative committee report favours more involvement of bureaucracy,” he said.
V. Ramprasad of Friends of Lakes, which has been fighting for the removal of encroachments, said the report just brought things back to square one. “It is bound to go the same route as previous reports. There is no relief at all in this report, and the mechanisms, which allowed encroachments, can now regularise them,” he said.
Three other reports are gathering dust
The report tabled on Tuesday joins three other reports that looked at clearing of encroachments from either government land in general, or in and around lakes in particular. The result is voluminous documents that occupy space in government offices, with little action on the ground.
In February 2011, the then High Court judge N.K. Patil led a 10-member committee to determine protection of lakes. Much of the broader recommendations find place in the current house committee report: from lake side plantations to ensuring treatment of all sewage. However, when it comes to encroachments, the N.K. Patil report is categorical: All encroachment must go.
“How can there be a concept of regularisation of encroachments?” says Mr. Patil. “A few people will be affected, but it will prevent mass contamination, flooding and water shortage in the city. If they had implemented the report we had submitted, public property worth crores of rupees could have been saved,” he said.
Ironically, in the preface of the report, he notes that efforts of government agencies had not matched up to the requirements.
V. Balasubramanian, Chairman of Karnataka’s Task Force for Recovery and Protection of Public Lands, was frank about the impact of these committees. The task force was formed to look at a 2007 A.T. Ramaswamy-led joint committee report. It submitted its observations and implementable action in June 2011. “These reports are recommendatory, and they tend to gather dust as no one reads them. You need political will to remove encroachments, and irrespective of the party in power, serious action is nearly impossible,” he said.
While one of the recommendations of the joint committee on tank encroachment was to instruct local authorities to conduct a ‘comprehensive study’ before declaration of dead lakes, Mr. Balasubramanian said this discretion will allow for the continuation of encroachments. “The local authorities are the ones that allow encroachments. Giving them any power would just regularise encroachments in the name of dead lakes,” he said.
