On June 28th, Puttenahalli Neighbourhood Lake Improvement Trust (PNLIT), the first citizens’ collective in Bengaluru to formally maintain a lake, celebrated its 15th anniversary.
Puttenahalli lake, also called Puttakere because of its relatively small size, was waste-ridden and nearly dry in the 2000s. In 2008, Usha Rajagopalan, writer and resident of an apartment near the lake, launched a campaign to revive it. Other interested residents in the area soon joined in, and they formally registered themselves as PNLIT. Their first major success came in 2010 when BBMP started reviving the lake in response to their campaign. The next year, PNLIT signed an MoU with the Palike to take care of the lake’s maintenance.
Over the years, PNLIT has raised funds, collaborated with institutions like IISc, and worked with government agencies and local residents for lake maintenance. In the 2010s, they entered into an agreement with government agencies to allow the release of treated water from a neighbouring apartment into the lake to fill it up, ensured routine testing of the lake water, and installed aerator fountains and biofiltration platforms to improve water quality. They also got government agencies to respond against sewage entry and lake encroachment, and got the lake exempt from commercial fishing. Today the lake is a pristine biodiversity hub where 122 bird species have been spotted.
Read more: How Bengaluru’s lakes got a second chance at life
In 2020, however, BBMP refused to renew its MoU with PNLIT and other lake groups based on a High Court order in a Public Interest Litigation. The court order said that BBMP can’t enter into MoUs with any “corporate entity”. PNLIT and other groups impleaded into the case, arguing that citizen groups are not corporate entities. PNLIT has continued to maintain the lake with funds raised from local residents while the case is ongoing. The Trust has had both a rewarding and challenging journey, and has been a model for dozens of citizens’ groups.
In this interview with Citizen Matters, Usha Rajagopalan, founding trustee and chairperson of PNLIT, talks about their wins and challenges so far, what the absence of an MoU means to them, how citizens can take care of their local lakes, and more.
After we recorded this interview, on July 10th, BBMP issued a notice to PNLIT to stop any work in the lake in the absence of an MoU. According to a report in The New Indian Express, BBMP also warned all lake groups and NGOs to not raise any funds for lake development, calling it illegal. The report also quotes a senior official from the Karnataka Tank Development and Conservation Authority on their plans to cancel permission to associations that collect funds from the public as the matter is still in court.
Watch the full interview: