HMDA clueless on vanishing lakes

HYDERABAD: Failure of the government in protecting the fast-disappearing water bodies in the city reflected in a report submitted by the HMDA to the Lok Ayukta on Thursday morning.

The HMDA was asked by the Lok Ayukta on June 6 to submit a detailed report on the total number of lakes in the city, those which have vanished, list of those which have been encroached and also about the steps being taken by the authorities concerned.

Surprisingly, the HMDA failed to provide information on the number of lakes which have gone missing or those which were facing serious encroachment issues. The report was submitted by Neerabh Kumar Prasad, commissioner, HMDA and officials from GHMC were also present at the hearing. Not convinced with the report, Lokayukta posted the matter for hearing on January 7, 2013 and asked the officials to submit a complete report.

The report invited the ire of the activists and environmentalists who have been fighting the issue. "This is a grave misconduct on the part of the officials," said Thakur Rajkumar Singh, convenor, SOUL (Save Our Urban Lakes) who is one of the petitioners in the case. "Though they were given three months time, they did not do any legwork to find out about missing lakes. Our main complaint was about the disappearing lakes in the city. Funnily, the list of lakes that the HMDA has submitted is exactly the same that we had compiled sometime back. This clearly shows that they did not submit anything new," he said.

The HMDA in its report provided details of the 531 lakes in the HUDA area. According to the report, there are 266 lakes for which FTL demarcation is complete and 258 lakes have been identified for beautification by the GHMC.

However, they failed to provide information on concrete action being taken regarding the lakes facing encroachment. The officials said that they had called for public objections regarding the lakes under encroachment and they are still waiting for the process to complete.

The Lokayukta was hearing these cases after a number of civil society organizations had approached the court over encroachment of lakes. The Lokayukta had clubbed all these cases and ordered the GHMC and HMDA to submit reports in this regard.