CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has sought affidavits from the district administration on measures taken to protect and preserve waterbodies in Cuttack.
A division bench comprising Justice KR Mohapatra and Justice V Narasingh took up the issue suo motu on Thursday and directed the additional district magistrate (revenue) Cuttack, to place on record the steps taken in compliance with the high court judgment passed on October 11, 2012.
The court asked additional government advocate Debasis Nayak, who is also counsel for the Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC), to obtain instructions from the authorities and file affidavits within four weeks. The matter has been posted for further hearing on August 13.
During the July 9 proceedings, the bench revisited the court’s judgment, which had laid down an institutional mechanism for the protection, preservation and conservation of water bodies in the city. Under those directions, the revenue divisional commissioner (central division), Cuttack, was required to head a committee of not more than seven members, including representatives of the Cuttack Development Authority, CMC and the State Pollution Control Board.
The 2012 order had mandated that any proposal for changing the classification of land recorded as ‘Jalasaya’ (waterbody) to homestead land must first be processed through the tehsildar and collector and then placed before the committee for approval. The committee was required to record reasons before permitting any such change.
The judgment also empowered the committee to examine cases where lands recorded as water bodies had allegedly lost their original character or had been incorrectly classified. Significantly, it directed scrutiny of any land-classification changes made during the operation of a status quo order passed by the court on April 8, 2005, stating that such changes would be treated as legally non-existent if found to have violated the directions.
The 2012 judgment was passed on a PIL filed in 2004 by one Tapan Kumar Das alleging that Cuttack city, which once had 1,400 tanks and waterbodies, had just 200 or so left now.
