Residents complain against levelling of water body in South City-1
The protest over illegal filling of water body comes at a time when the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) is planning to revive seven ponds in the city before monsoon at a cost of ₹1 crore. The groundwater table in Gurgaon is depleting at an alarming rate — 15.58 metres between 2005 and 2016
Residents of South City-1 has alleged that a notified pond has been filled up with demolition and construction waste over the years and is being used for setting up a group housing society by the Haryana Urban Development Authority (Huda).
The comes at a time when the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) is planning to revive seven ponds in the city before monsoon at a cost of Rs 1 crore. Moreover, the groundwater table in Gurgaon is depleting at an alarming rate — 15.58 metres between 2005 and 2016.
“The city has already lost more than 9,000 trees this year and pollution level is at an all-time high. At such a time, chopping more trees for construction of houses is not the ideal thing to do,” said Navneet Rajan Wasan, IPS (retd), of South City-1.
He said he had written to the Huda administration on Friday regarding the issue. In 2015, the then deputy commissioner of Gurgaon TL Satyaprakash had issued an order stating that “the filling up of South City-1 water body is causing floods. The common land and water bodies are to be treated as inalienable community property, which needs to be preserved.”
According to villagers, the Silokhera pond in the area was a huge one until some 10 years ago. On visiting the area on Saturday, HT found only barren land with a few trees. “The area is close to National Highway-8, and that is why it was filled up for commercial purpose,” claimed Shiv Prakash, a villager.
Read I Gurgaon civic body maps water bodies to remove encroachments
An Huda official said the matter will be looked into. “We will verify the facts and find out the land use of the area. We will follow the rules and no violations will be permitted,” said Yashpal Yadav, Huda administrator.
According to the government records, of the 120 village ponds in Gurgaon district, only 15 are currently in a condition to be revived.
The Central Groundwater Board had categorised Gurgaon as ‘over-exploited’, following which the Punjab and Haryana high court banned groundwater extraction in the district in 2015.
Last year, the MCG had carried out an exercise to map all water bodies in the city as due to urbanization, the land use record of a large number of water bodies was a
