BENGALURU: An 80ft-wide road is being constructed adjacent to Pattandur Agrahara Lake in east Bengaluru, which citizens allege is coming up in the waterbody’s buffer zone and hence is illegal.
Several protests demanding that the construction be avoided or stopped have been held, but to no avail. The stretch is said to connect ITPB Main Road and Whitefield Main Road and is likely to reduce traffic on smaller lanes in the area.
Sandeep Anirudhan, convener, Namma Whitefield, said, “Construction of the road began in October last year. It was initially supposed to be built on the lakebed, but was later moved to the buffer zone. The buffer zone is very important for any lake and more relevant in smaller ones such as Pattandur Agrahara Lake. If they build a road over the buffer zone, catchment area and stormwater drain, there will be no ecosystem left for the lake.”
The width of the buffer zone has been reduced from 70 to 30 feet and that norm too is not being respected by the civic body, Sandeep claimed.
“The buffer zone is a concept that does not make sense in urban/industrial set-ups. Buffer zones are ideally supposed to have three different types of vegetation with a root system that absorbs impurities flowing into the lake, which made sense in an agrarian set-up. The only impurities that flowed towards the lake were pesticides. However, building a road on buffer zones will not help the lake in any way,” lake expert Nagesh Aras said.
The group working towards conserving the lake claims to have written several letters to various officials, all of which have gone unheard.
BBMP, however, said the work is not illegal. “The revised master plan from 2006 has marked this as a road. That was even before the civic agency was born. It is a road for trucks that will help decongest traffic,” said chief engineer BS Prahalad.
