To conserve the world’s largest man-made lake — known as Upper Lake — in the town, the Madhya Pradesh government is once again looking at foreign aid.
It will soon demand funds from the World Bank to conserve at least two lakes of Bhopal — Upper Lake and Lower Lake.
Both the lakes are fast drying and have reached the dying stage now. The government of Japan had earlier sanctioned and disbursed an amount of Rs 300 crore approximately to conserve the Upper lake, which is converting into a wasteland.
“Approximately 50 million litres of sewage water is dumped in the lake each day through 14 nallahs. We have to complete the work of treating this waste water. A project has been left uncompleted under ‘Bhoj Wetland Project’ funded by the Japanese government. We will demand more funds from the World Bank,” said Raghav Chandra, principal secretary department of local-self governance.
The 1,100-year-old lake was created by the then ruler of Bhopal Raja Bhoj by constructing the world’s largest man-made earthen bund at eastern bank of the lake.
“A heavy traffic on this bund is posing a threat and there is an urgent need to find a solution in engineering. Tonnes and tonnes of traffic load and illegal activities are posing risk to the bund,” said MN Buch, retired senior bureaucrat and ex-Mayor of Bhopal.
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At present, the state government has readied a multi-pronged blue print through which it will encourage construction activities near the lake to promote tourism.
Chandra said his department had a plan to construct a suspension bridge, a buffer zone, a side-walk path of 60 km around the periphery of the lake and various tourism development activities are likely to be proposed soon.
But veteran journalist and social activist Madan Mohan Joshi does not subscribe to the idea of encouraging and promoting tourism activities near the lake. “Tourism is a horrifying word for us in terms of lake conservation. It is one of the biggest lakes in the world and as an additional source of drinking water, and no tourism development activity should be permitted near the lake.”
A futile exercise of lake conservation was launched in 1995. The project was to be completed by 2002 with financial assistance of Rs 247.02 crore from Japan Bank for International Cooperation.
The water of the lake now evaporates at higher speed and none has checked the sewage waste and effluents which are dumped by locals residing near the lake.
The water of lower lake is also high polluted and needs immediate attention. The government does not have any plan for geo-chemical analysis and archaeological analysis of its sediments.