Work on clearing encroachments on city lakes — some of which overflowed during the recent rain — is now awaiting legislators’ nod. The report of the 10-member House Committee on Tank Encroachment has been held up for nearly four months without being placed before the House as it is awaiting signatures of seven members.
Without the panel’s nod, Revenue officials cannot start work on removing encroachments, which were partly blamed for the recent deluge in several parts of the city. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which is drawing flak from residents of affected areas, has been writing letters to the Revenue Department to take up the work. “We cannot remove encroachments, Revenue officials have to do it. Revenue officials carried out surveys of lakes and pointed out encroachments. But they have neither shared the survey reports with us nor have they removed the encroachments,” a BBMP officer said.
Meanwhile, K.B. Koliwad, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and chairman of the committee, said the report was finalised in June. “We have circulated the report among the members for them to sign or file dissent notes. But we are struggling to find qorum for many of our meetings,” he said.
Who has signed it, and who hasn’t
Only three members of the 10-member House Committee on Tank Encroachment — K.S. Puttanaiah, B.R. Yavagal and K.B. Koliwad, its chairman, have signed its report as of Wednesday, sources said.
BJP’s S. Suresh Kumar has resigned as a member of the committee and stayed away. His resignation, however, has not been accepted.
H.D. Kumaraswamy and K. Gopalaiah of the JD(S), M. Krishnappa of the BJP, and N.A. Haris, N.Y. Gopalakrishna and K. Sudhakar of the Congress are yet to sign the report.
Mr. Haris and Mr. Gopalakrishna told The Hindu that they would sign it in the next meeting scheduled in a couple of weeks. The others were unavailable for comment.
Passing the buck
The recent flooding in the city was a direct result of overflowing of lakes and storm-water drains. The carrying capacity of the lakes and the SWDs have severely contracted because of encroachments and heavy silting, according to civic agencies. But ask them what have they done to remove the encroachments, they start passing the buck — from civic agencies to the Revenue Department and they towards the House Committee on Tank Encroachments, whose report is yet to be submitted, leaving the city inundated.
Facing flak from citizens for overflowing lakes, BBMP officials have written multiple letters to revenue officials asking them to remove encroachments, to no use.
The special drive to remove encroachments of tank beds in the city that was on in full swing, came to an abrupt halt in 2014 following outrage over houses being pulled down on Puttenahalli lake and the discovery that 23 BDA layouts were built on tank beds. The state assembly formed a house committee to look into the issue in October 2014, untill whose report the demolition drive was suspended. Nearly three years later, as the House Committee is yet to submit its report to the assembly, the hands of the revenue officials are tied. As BBMP writes to Revenue Department, they await directions from the state government.
However, V Shankar, Deputy Commissioner, Bengaluru (Urban) district, who led the earlier demolition drive as well, said that following the recent floods in the city, he had requested House Committee chairman K B Koliwad to let them re-start the drive. “The chairman has agreed. We will restart the drive from Monday. Though we will not demolish buildings, for which we shall wait for the recommendations of the Committee, we will start reclaiming empty parcels of land and start fencing lakes,” he said.
Kshitij Urs, of People’s Campaign for Right to Water (PCRW), said that it was unfortunate that we were forming committees and endlessly waiting for their reports, for carrying out functions constitutionally assigned to local governments. “While removal of encroachments is a must, the government needs to compensate for the destruction of habitat for the state’s own fault of allowing encroachments,” he said.
BBMP lax on removing SWD encroachments
Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials are blaming lake bed encroachments for the floods, writing letters to revenue department seeking their removal. But the civic body has also been lax on removing encroachments of Storm Water Drains (SWD) in the city.
The tale of removing SWD encroachments is eerily similar to that of lake encroachment clearance drive. BBMP embarked on a special drive to remove these encroachments following the July 2016 floods. However, the drive soon fizzled out. Of the 81 acres identified as encroachments in the 800-km storm water drain (SWD) network in the city, the BBMP has successfully cleared only 11.21 acres (a mere 13.8%) till date. Of the 1,953 buildings that the civic body had identified as encroachments, only 1,225 buildings have been removed. 728 buildings are yet to be removed.
BBMP Commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad, while conceding a slow down of SWD encroachment clearance drive, said that he had recently held two review meetings to re-start the drive. “We have reviewed the encroachments on the Vrushabhavathi Valley and decided to begin work on removing them from next week,” he said. The new found focus on Vrushabhavathi Valley comes in the wake of Mysuru Road flooding during the recent spate of heavy rains, again indicating a knee jerk reaction, experts argue.
