Bengaluru: Successive governments in Karnataka are to blame for the environmental crisis in Bengaluru, either in looking the other way while encroachers filled up lakes or in actually allotting residential plots and tech parks to come up on lake beds. So where does the buck stop?
The Bangalore Development Authority's Kempe Gowda layout, named after the city's founder, has taken eight years in planning, and now, just as the BDA gets set to distribute 5000 housing sites to people, the national green tribunal has stayed all development in the layout as it encroaches upon a part of a lake.
KB Koliwad, head of legislature committee of lakes, said, "The BDA commissioner says there is no encroachment, but according to my department survey, it has encroached 25 guntas for roads."
The BDA in fact is identified as the biggest government agency encroaching on lakes. As a matter of fact, the BDA once gave out sites to the Chief Minister and the Assembly Speaker too, on lake beds.
According to Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, nothing of the sort happened during him time. Conceding that it had happened previously, the Chief Minister said that the government would look into it.
Koliwad, however, said, "Whatever it may be, government is government, earlier or now. BDA has encroached more than 3000 acres."
The lake committee's scathing observations about top builders squatting on lake beds also shows none of this could happen without government officials in other departments helping. For instance, the Bagmane Tech Park in east Bengaluru is said to be an encroached property.
Who allowed the tech park to be built, allotted land, allowed plan approvals, power and water supply? In listing buildings like these as encroachers, the committee has to take into account the collusion of officials and politicians who were willing to allow it, or even allot the land.
According to environmental activist Leo Saldanha, "Demolish the entire building. Send the message to everyone that Bengaluru is a place that does not tolerate the encroachment of its commons. We value economic security, but we also value water security. If corporates want to squat in illegal structures and say they can get away with it, will they do that in San Francisco?"
Industrial bodies, meanwhile, claim that government officials who aided such encroachment should be penalised first.
"These are government agencies, we trust government agencies as a common man. They give clean land. If government itself makes such mistakes, if officers make such mistakes that official should be punished. Such officers should be severely punished, arrested, put in jail, you have to give the message. So even if politicians want to do this, they should not do this job...it should be a threat to officials at all times," said Assocham co-chairman Dr J Crasta.
The legislature committee now awaits responses from encroachers in order to sift the innocent squatters from the guilty squatters.
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