LG directs rejuvenation of Bhalswa lake by December

The LG secretariat, in an official statement, said Saxena has expressed his “deep disappointment” at the state of the maintenance and upkeep of the lake by the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), the designated agency in-charge for rejuvenation of the waterbody since May 2019.

New Delhi Lieutenant governor Vinai Kumar Saxena on Saturday inspected the Bhalswa lake in north-west Delhi and directed agencies to complete the rejuvenation of the waterbody by December. Saxena also ordered that the lake’s periphery be cleaned within a week in preparation for the Chhath festival later this month.

LG Saxena also ordered that the lake’s periphery be cleaned within a week in preparation for the Chhath festival later this month. (HT Photo)

The LG secretariat, in an official statement, said Saxena has expressed his “deep disappointment” at the state of the maintenance and upkeep of the lake by the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), the designated agency in-charge for rejuvenation of the waterbody since May 2019.

“Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has been directed to immediately undertake the cleaning of the banks of the lake in preparation for the forthcoming Chhath festival and instructed all stakeholder agencies to parallelly start work on the complete restoration and rejuvenation of the lake in a mission mode,” the statement said.

Saxena also asked for a boundary wall to segregate the lake from the neighbouring Bhalswa Dairy on within a month, the LG office stated.

“Another critical aspect of rejuvenation and restoration of the lake was construction of a Precast RCC Drain and pipeline for segregating the waste from the Dairy and carrying the sewerage to the supplementary drain across the lake. The construction of the same were awarded by DJB in January, 2022, with a completion period of 04 months. However, the same had yet not been completed,” the statement said.

The DJB and the Delhi government did not officially respond to Saxena’s criticisms. However, an official privy to the restoration project, on condition of anonymity, said the DJB went “out of its way” to start the project to improve the water quality of the lake, and its work does not pertain to cleaning garbage on its banks.

“We were granted a no-objection certificate for this project for only removal of cow dung in the lake and building an interceptor line to tap incoming cowdung from the nearby dairy colony. The landscaping and cleaning work does not come under DJB. We went beyond the mandate to improve the water quality levels and are now being blamed for things we were not responsible for,” the official said.

The Bhalswa lake has, over the decades, reduced significantly in size due to the nearby landfill and the surrounding dairy colonies, and the regular dumping of garbage and dairy waste into the lake has severely polluted its waters. However, it still remains one of the biggest water bodies in the Capital.

In 2007, the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) had created a management plan for the restoration of the lake, suggesting that treated water from a nearby supplementary drain recharge the water body, and that a local sewage treatment plant be developed. However, the INTACH plan was never implemented.