?Get lakes back from concrete cover-up!?

FIVE YEARS later, the landmark order delivered by the Supreme Court in an agricultural land tenancy case seems to have landed LDA in deep waters courtesy district administration. Reason: In the process of catering to the people?s growing housing need, the civic agency has covered up several such natural resources of water for plotted development.

Material resources like forests, tanks, ponds, hillock, mountain etc. are nature’s bounty. They maintain delicate ecological balance. They need to be protected for a proper and healthy environment to enable the people to enjoy a quality life, which is essence of the guaranteed right under Article 21 of the Constitution. Such measures must begin at the grass-root level if they were to become the nation’s pride.
—Justice Syed Shah
Mohd Quadri and Justice
SN Phukan in 2001

HT Image

FIVE YEARS later, the landmark order delivered by the Supreme Court in an agricultural land tenancy case seems to have landed LDA in deep waters courtesy district administration. Reason: In the process of catering to the people’s growing housing need, the civic agency has covered up several such natural resources of water for plotted development. '

Never in its wildest dream, the city’s development regulator would have thought that a day would come when it would be asked to restore these filled up ponds/lakes back to original.

And this is precisely what the administration authorities here are asking of the LDA. In a letter to LDA Secretary RB Yadav, additional district magistrate (executive) NP Singh has submitted a full six-page list of such ponds that have fallen prey to the unbridled development. “A separate survey of ponds that have similarly been covered up by the UP Avas Evam Vikas Parishad is underway,” said Singh told HT Lucknow Live.

A cursory look at the list shows that the concrete urban sprawl has taken its toll on 140 such natural water resources that have been wiped out of their existence. In their place now stand high-rise buildings, posh houses and even roads. For instance, the Ambedkar University has been built by filling up at least four ponds of the Aurangabad-Khalsa locality. Likewise, in Vibhuti Khand of Gomti Nagar a couple of these ponds have now been takeover by real estate developers for prestigious group housing projects.

To be fair to the LDA, with the exception of few, most of these acts were undertaken much before the apex court’s directives. So how does LDA intend to cope with the situation now?

“Alternative sites would be provide wherever possible to dig up new ponds to comply with the spirit of the SC order,” said LDA Secretary RB Yadav.