Bengaluru: In its continuous fight to reclaim the lakes, United Bengaluru along with the government representatives, inspected Sarakki, Arakere and Hulimavu lakes. The citizen group found that the buffer zone of all the three lakes have been encroached upon by private builders and commercial establishments, and the lake land was being regularly used for dumping garbage.
During the inspection of the Sarakki Lake, one of the residents complained about the illegal dumping of debris and garbage by the private lorries late at night.
Freedom fighter H.S. Doreswamy asked the Jaraganahalli ward constituency corporator B.M. Shobha to take the required measures to rejuvenate the lake.
“Lakes are being killed due to the dumping of debris and garbage. It is sad that our heritage is being destroyed and our government is not taking any steps to protect them,” he added.
Shobha was, however, clueless when asked about the usage of Rs 6 crore allocated by the state government to develop Sarakki Lake.
During their visit to Arakere Lake the experts were in for a shock as they found that lake rejuvenation work was stalled due to the objection raised by the tehsildar’s office.
Veena Hegde, member, Arakere Neighbourhood Improvement Trust (ANIT) said, “The government agencies pass the buck due to which the lake development is getting delayed. There should be proper coordination between the departments and only then we can protect our lakes.”
Arakere Lake, which covers an area of 37 acres 21 guntas, has constantly been the target of apartments from where untreated sewage flows into the lake. As per the experts, Rs 12 crore was allocated for the transformation of the lake but no work has been carried out by the civic authorities to improve the condition of the lake.
On being asked about the tracking of follow up actions following the filing of police complaints, Sridhar Pabbisetty, CEO, Namma Bengaluru Foundation, said, “Till now the police officials in most of the cases have said that they had resolved the issue. From next week we will start tracking the developments to check if their statements have any merit.”
