The High Court of Karnataka on Thursday asked the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) whether any parallel authority was inquiring into the issue of encroachments of storm water drains (SWDs) in the city and if there was any stay order against removing encroachments.
Also, the court wanted to know from the BBMP counsel whether the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has given any report on the SWDs of the city.
A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice S. Vishwajith Shetty posed these questions orally while adjourning further hearing on the issues of SWDs and pothole repair works till Friday to enable the BBMP counsel to seek instruction from the officers on these queries.
The High Court has been monitoring the issues related to SWDs, lakes and potholes through various petitions over the few years.
Number of encroachments
Earlier, BBMP counsel V. Sreenidhi submitted a status report on the identification and removal of encroachments of SWDs and pothole filling works prepared by the BBMP’s Engineer-in-Chief B.S. Prahlad.
It has been stated in the report that the BBMP undertakes work of desilting of SWDs from time to time and 2,626 encroachments of SWDs were identified during 2016-17 by conducting surveys. While 428 of these encroachments were removed in 2016-17, 1,502 encroachments were cleared in 2018-19 and 69 encroachments were removed between August 30, 2022 and September 13, 2022. The process is underway to remove the remaining 627 encroachments, the report stated.
Sluice gates
On proposal to install sluice gates in lakes to manage water flow, the BBMP has said that process to prepare a details project report is under way besides seeking the assistance of the Minor Irrigation Department of the Government, which has installed maximum number of sluice gates to the lakes in Chikkaballapura district.
Pothole filling
On pothole filling work, the report stated that there were 2,231 major potholes as on September 14, and of these 2,010 potholes have been repaired, and the process of filling 221 potholes is under way.
The report also said that citizens grievance redressal cell in the wards have been set up and the details of these cells were notified through publications in the newspaper giving names and contact numbers of the engineers besides providing these details in the official website of the BBMP.
