Bengaluru: At a time when Bengaluru is soaking in the monsoon showers, for hundreds of residents of a swanky apartment in HSR Layout (Sector 2), a deluge of woes came pouring from the skies!
Last week, just as the showers got heavy, the residents who wished to enjoy a good view of the Somasundara Palya Lake in rains were left to only pump out rain water from their basement, while snakes squirmed out of the lake.
According to some of the lake activists in the neighbourhood, the Somasundara Palya Lake has no catachment area and while the in-let point is choked, the outlet point is yet to be identified and repaired to ensure free flow of rainfall.
Upset with the lackadaisical attitude of the BBMP officials, who were not even aware of the absence of a rajakaluve, a civic activist, on condition of anonymity, said, “The locality has developed by leaps and bounds in the last decade.
Till date, the Lake Development Authority officials or other concerned officials have not taken any initiative to revive the lake. Forget removing illegal encroachments or rejuvenating the contaminated lake, the officials did not even bother to check if the in-let and outlet points of the lake were functioning. So, where else will the rain water flow instead of entering homes and flooding the locality?”
While residents and activists allege that rampant encroachments on the buzzer zone of the lake has choked the outflow points, the BBMP has so far not made any efforts to identify the encroachments or demolish them.
When asked Bommanahalli zone Joint Commissioner Muniraju about the encroachments, he flatly denied there were any and only maintained that a recent survey had identified an outlet point of the lake near Muneshwara Temple in HSR Layout, and the BBMP was taking action.
“Only after the flooding did we realise that the lake did not have an outlet point. Now, we need to connect the rajakaluve near the temple to a rajakaluve in Agara Lake to ensure free flow of water. The works will commence shortly and in the next few weeks the problem will resolve,” he said.
