AMC’s ambitious plan to make Ahmedabad the ‘Lake City’ of India by developing 142 lakes has run into bureaucratic roadblocks. Including the famous Sarkhej Roza lake, the Ahmedabad Collector office denied giving the civic body land containing 33 lakes.
The total area of the 33 lakes is 9.29 lakh square metre.
Officials of the AMC engineering department said the Collector has the ownership of majority of lakes. The state government backed the AMC plan following which a survey was carried out to identify the lakes. A total of 142 lakes were identified and classified into three categories: lakes with area larger than 5 hectare (6-7 lakes), 2.2 to 5 hectare (37 lakes) and area less than 2 hectare (98 lakes).
The survey revealed that at many places the lakes did not exist as a water body due to residential and industrial encroachment and dumping of waste. These included nearly 50 percent of the 142 lakes. They were found to have no capacity to retain rain water.
Some of the land covered by lakes has been utilised to erect government buildings or projects. While in some cases, the lake has been identified as a wasteland, gaucher (grazing land) or non-use. There is dispute whether these lands should be identified as lakes or not. Some of the lakes are in private possession. For instance, the 51,433 sqm land of Sarkhej Roza in Makarba gam is registered in the name of Abdul Miya Gulamnabi Munshi, president of Sarkhej Roza Committee and so it cannot be handed over to AMC.
A senior official of the collectorate said possession of 5 lakes has been handed over to AMC and the process of giving other lakes is in progress. The district land office is measuring the land following which the handover will take place.
