A committee set up by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to inspect the lakes in Bengaluru has lambasted the Karnataka government and various state agencies for "miserably" failing to discharge their duties.
According to a report by India Today, the committee, in its report submitted on May 31, said that Bellandur, the biggest lake of Bengaluru, “by sheer callousness and indifference of the authorities has become the largest septic tank of the city.”
It has also blamed indiscriminate dumping of construction and demolishing waste, municipal solid waste and vast spread of hydrophytes and microphytes in the waters for pollution in the Bellandur Lake.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) had in April formed a three-member committee to inspect the lakes in the city. The commission led by Chairperson Senior Advocate Raj Panjwani was asked by the NGT to inspect Agara, Bellandur and Varthur lakes.
A professor from Indian Institute of Science- Bangalore, a senior scientist from Central Pollution Control Board, the commissioner of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike assisted the commission in the inspection.
They noticed during an inspection that the "Storm Water Drain outlets near the lake were discharging nothing but sewage and effluents and the same was being released into the lake". The report said that the committee was shocked to find a road that was constructed in the Varthur lake by dumping C&D waste under the pretext of laying a pipeline.
In April, a bench headed by NGT acting chairperson Justice Jawad Rahim had reprimanded Karnataka government saying that the report submitted by the government was "incorrect and misleading" and was bereft of the actual action taken on the ground.
The green panel, which stopped short of imposing a fine on the state and its instrumentalities, then formed a committee to inspect the lakes.
The committee in its report has submitted that the directions of the NGT have not been followed in "letter and spirit".
