500 families pay bitter price for SWD encroachment
Shubh Enclave-Shriram Chirping Woods on Haralur Road has witnessed flooding 5 times in last 2 years
By Prasanna Bhat
BENGALURU:
The rampant concretisation of Bengaluru has brought a fresh headache not only for civic officials but also for citizens who have invested their hard-earned money to stay peacefully in their own homes. Every downpour in the city results in flooding and hampering the life of residents.
Take the case of Shubh Enclave-Shriram Chirping Woods on Haralur Road, where we stay. Incessant rains have happened many times before, and every time there is water- logging in our basement, which needs to be pumped out, causing a lot of inconvenience. Today (Wednesday, October 21) morning at 3 am, the security knocked at our door asking us to move our car parked in the basement, which we did immediately. By then, the water was almost 2 feet high in our large basement area.
Cars marooned
Many people, considering the Covid situation, are out of town and had parked their vehicles in the basement. The water-logging is due to Kasavanahalli lake, the storm water drains and Kaikondrahalli lake not being connected to the raja kaluve properly. A house built on the raja kaluve, and under litigation, is causing all this.
Facilities crippled
There are 500 families that have been affected. The lift control room, the electrical room, the pump room and the basement were flooded. Senior citizens, women and children in particular were badly affected. As the property is a 19-floor high-rise, it becomes difficult in such situations to get basics like milk and water.
Lax rep, officials
We made several panic calls to the former corporator and BBMP officials early in the morning. They took their own time to even respond to today’s incident. This layout and the apartment have been built after taking all permissions. Don’t the government and BBMP have to ensure that people are not affected by the raja kaluve and lake overflowing. The BBMP executive engineer promised to get the work done, but it is a futile wait.
Futile tweets
The BBMP Commissioner visited this area 3 years back when the house atop the raja kaluve was ordered to be demolished. Residents of our apartment and Shubh Enclave have tweeted about the conditions of the roads and the nala multiple times but it has not been addressed until now. In the last year alone, this area in Shubh Enclave has been flooded 3-4 times. Top BBMP officials have visited a few times. They are aware of the problem but there is no action from their end to resolve this issue.
All the people in the apartment are without water in the taps. The lifts are not operational due to the flooding and climbing up to the 19th floor is no joke. We are honest tax- payers. By no means this is the infrastructure we should be getting. The basics have not been addressed. We want BBMP to complete the nala work and resolve this flooding issue permanently.
(The writer has been residing in Shriram Chirping Woods since the last one and a half years.)
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