BENGALURU: Despite Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) bulldozing unauthorised buildings over Storm Water Drains (SWDs) and lake land in the past in the Mahadevapura zone, owners and developers near Pattandur Agrahara Lake have brazenly deployed vehicles and made an illegal road for an unauthorised layout that is coming up in Mahadevapura.
Activists say that, on the pretext of making the road to Sri Muneshwara temple, the developers are making such a road. According to revenue records, the said road is only a ‘Kaludari’ (walking path). According to convenor of Namma Whitefield Sandeep Anirudhan, earlier land sharks had encroached on Pattandur Agrahara Lake. Civil society fought court battles to save the lake and filed two PILs.
The tahsildar was helpful, and Bangalore Development Authority also filed a land grab case, and the State government filed a case against encroachers and got their claims stayed. The government also sanctioned Rs one crore to fence the lake in 2022.
“Officials of the lake department who had come to the last ward committee meeting said the revenue department has completed the survey of the lake boundary, and now based on the survey, the BBMP lake division will fence the lake area. Even before we can see the lake boundary fenced, attempts are made to build illegal roads on the lake buffer zone to connect to a new unauthorised layout in Whitefield,” alleged Anirudhan.
Confirming the issue, Bengaluru East Tahsildar Ravi Y said, that as soon as he got the information on Friday, he directed Revenue Inspector (RI) Partha Sarathy to inspect. “The RI has stopped the road work and asked developers to furnish the records. They claim it is ‘kharab’ land but we need to check the records, but even so, no road construction will be permitted in the lake buffer zone,” he said.
About the alleged unauthorised layout, the Executive Engineer of Mahadevapura Zone said, “The tahsildar needs to act. The revenue department needs to verify the conversion of land and BDA approval to develop the layout. If not, the layout formation is illegal and needs to be stopped.”