Tech parks, luxury villas among drain encroachers in Bengaluru

Marquee tech parks and plush gated communities are among encroachers of stormwater drains in Bengaluru's IT hub, which last week faced some of the worst waterlogging in recent memory.

Municipal authorities, accused of going soft on the rich and powerful, have now started clearing the encroachments in a big way after Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai ordered a crackdown on the root cause of the devastating floods.

Experts say silt accumulation and encroachments of these drains are the biggest cause of flooding.

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The encroachers include Bagmane Tech Park, Purva Paradise, Rainbow Drive, Wipro, RMZ Ecospace, Gopalan Enterprises, Divya School, Columbia Asia Hospital, New Horizon College, Adarsh Developers, Epsilon, DivyaSree 77, Prestige Group, Salarpuria Group and Nalapad, according to a BBMP document.

These entities have encroached upon anywhere between 10 guntas and 50 guntas at places like Mahadevapura, Junnasandra, Doddakannahalli, Hoodi, Bellandur, Sonnehalli, R Narayanapura, Ramagondanahalli, Kadubeesanahalli, Devarabesanahalli, Yemalur, Marathahalli and Challaghatta, BBMP officials said. Some of them have encroached on the stormwater drain in 13 different survey numbers, officials said.

Among the most abiding images of the flooding was the waterlogged Outer Ring Road (ORR) near Ecospace. Some of the luxury villas that were marooned in the inundation were built on lands that were once stormwater drains. The villas cost up to Rs 10 crore.

Rainbow Drive Layout was one of the worst-hit areas, where boats were out on the streets to rescue residents.

The BBMP has promised to rebuild stormwater drains on recovered properties that are vacant or where temporary structures have come up. "If the property is inhabited, the tahsildar has been authorised to issue a notice under Section 104 (summary eviction of person unauthorisedly occupying land) of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act," a senior BBMP officer in charge of the encroachment eviction drive said.

Multiple sources insisted that the BBMP had so far gone soft on big builders because of confusion about the drain sketch, which is based on the 1904 maps. "There was also a lack of clarity because some of the builders and tech parks had received land from the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) along the drains," an official said.

Bommai is learnt to have given clear instructions to the BBMP for removing all encroachments that are blocking the drains. The internal directions were given when engineers brought to Bommai's notice the names of big builders.

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A spokesperson for Wipro said the company has not received any notice from the BBMP. "Wipro abides by the laws of every jurisdiction where it does business and adheres to the highest standards of integrity. All Wipro buildings are as per pre-approved plans," the spokesperson said.

15 encroachments cleared

On Monday, the BBMP cleared encroachments from 15 places in its Mahadevapura zone, which was the worst hit by the flooding. Almost all zonal officers were on the ground, supervising the eviction drive. Some of the places where the encroachments were cleared were AECS Layout (three buildings, four compound walls), Challaghatta (vacant land, compound walls of a school and an apartment) and Basavanapura in KR Puram (a covered slab built by Cambridge College).