Hameed Khan Kunta or Gundacheruvu or Banjara Lake — as the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation calls it — is set to shrink once again as dumpers and tippers continue to dump building material to fill up the lake for creating an eight-foot walking track.
“We are building a 900-metre walking track which will have a width of 2.4 metres. There will be two entrances — one from beside the temple on Road No 1 Banjara Hills and another from Road No 13A beside the graveyard,” informs a GHMC official. A walk on the lake bed where dumpers are making countless trips is an experience. “We had to install a gate here as people were bringing their building rubble and dumping it into the lake. They even broke the gate and dumped material,” says a contractor who is racing against time to finish the job.
In another part of the lake, about a dozen workers wade into knee-deep filthy water to remove water hyacinth for anti-larval operations. But who will walk in the periphery of a lake that stinks to high heavens? “The waterworks department is going to do the maintenance work to ensure that the lake water is kept clean. Once the water diversion project is complete, only stormwater will enter the lake. Simultaneously, we are also going to do de-silting work,” says the GHMC official. “The whole area will be beautified at a cost of ₹ 94 lakh and the work will be completed in another month,” he says.
“This place smells horrible. We came to pray on Sivaratri but could not wait to finish darshan and leave. I felt like throwing up,” said Sunita C, a resident of Khairatabad who visited the temple on the lake bund. People commuting on the road get a noxious smell in the evening and morning, while a lingering foul odour is the norm.
Ironically, the lake was ‘saved’ under the National Lake Conservation Plan by spending ₹ 4.3 crore between 2002 and 2009. An 800-mm RCC ring drain was laid to divert the sewerage flowing into the lake.
According to the Ministry of Environment and Forest website, “The Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation Ltd (APTDC) in association with Taj GVK, the owner of the hotels situated in the lake precinct, has developed a conservation and management plan.”
How successful is the plan can be seen from the fact that the lake is going to shrink by 2,160 square metres once the walking track is completed by the end of this month.
