Much to the chagrin of residents, months after the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) started dumping debris on the periphery of Pattandur Agrahara lake at Whitefield for a road project, a Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (BMRCL) contractor on Tuesday night dumped truckloads of excavation debris in the waterbody.
According to Sandeep Anirudhan, a resident who is part of Save Pattandur Agarahara Lake group, said more than three trucks, with the stickers of BMRCL, dumped debris in the lake through the night.
“They must have dumped 50 or so loads in the lake itself. This is the same spot where the BBMP was dumping debris to construct a 80-feet Varthur Kodi–ITPL link road in violation of the National Green Tribunal orders on buffer zones. More than 200 loads of debris have so far been dumped into the buffer and well into the lake itself since October,” he said.
Complaints by the residents led to BMRCL engineers visiting the site. The contractor in-charge of the metro construction at Whitefield had subcontracted the transfer of debris. “Instead of taking it to a designated site, they have dumped it in the lake. We have taken action and imposed a penalty of ₹1 lakh on the contractor,” said BMRCL spokesperson U.A. Vasanth Rao.
The contractors have been asked to remove the dumped debris “forthright” and transport it to a designated site, while further penalties can be expected, said officials.
The issue of metro contractors violating norms in transporting debris has been recurrent. In the past, subcontractors had been found dumping debris by the side of roads and even on metro medians.
The BBMP has felled over 70 trees in the lake area for the controversial project; residents had traced trucks from the site of a multistorey, under-construction residential building also illegally dumping debris into the lake.
