Subramanyapura Lake Conservation Committee
Invitation to organise Subramanyapura Lake Conservation Committee
By creating the Subramanyapura Lake Protection Committee, local communities will be able to ensure that the lake is protected for their health and ecological benefits and also for generations to come. In order to organise this Committee, ESG invites representatives of all neighbourhoods and apartments located within the Subramanyapura Lake watershed for a planning meeting.
Meeting Details
Venue: Community Center of Bhuvaneswari Slum Development Complex
Date: Thursday, 31 March 2022
Time: 5 pm to 6.30 pm
To register for your participation in this meeting, please contact: Esha: 9845448287 [email protected]
Overview
Subramanyapura Lake is known to local villagers as a lake from where they could drink water, not very long ago. Now it is like a cesspool. There also have been attempts to grab the lake as real estate. If it remains as a lake today, it is because of the efforts of various local individuals and organizations such as Environment Support Group (ESG). Despite all these efforts, the lake today is highly polluted and encroached.
Subramanyapura Lake
Hundreds of poor families in desperate need of housing lived around the lake without any other alternative. Out of humanitarian grounds, the Karnataka High Court directed their rehabilitation in the abutting Gomala land by the Karnataka Slum Development Board. Consequently, over 850 flats were built to rehabilitate these families and also others.
Karnataka High Court in WP 817/2008 (A PIL initiated by ESG to save lakes) and WP 38401/2014 (a PIL initiated by Citizens Action Group) directed protection of the lake from pollution and encroachment. In accordance with Justice N K Patil’s Committee Report, the lake was to be fully rehabilitated with oversight by and direct involvement of local communities.
The High Court orders require surveying the legal limits of the lake and ensuring a 30 metres no development zone around it. In this space, it is recommended to raise useful and native trees and shrubs to benefit local communities. It is needed to turn the lake and its raja kaluve into a wetland ecosystem and a clean water body.
The present state of Subramanyapura Lake is miserable. Against the High Court orders, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has narrowed the kaluve by concretising it, thus destroying its water holding capacity. Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board is putting a sewage pipeline through the lake. All these activities are in clear violation of the orders of the Karnataka High Court.
ESG