Sir,

In response to the news item titled ‘Amid row over Railway Underpass… No hint of DPR for Kukkarahalli Lake Conservation’ (SOM dated Apr. 16), I would like to draw your attention to a few more facts related to the matter.

Being an engineer and having worked quite extensively on urban tanks of Mysuru, I was one of the experts involved by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) in the initiative of preparing a DPR (Detailed Project Report) for the development of Kukkarahalli Lake, from almost the beginning.

Ever since INTACH was awarded the project, it has:

(i) Conducted a couple of meetings with the experts and the interested public.

(ii) Got a few important technical reports prepared by outsourcing the work (example, Hydrological planning was done by the National Institute of Engineering (NIE), Mysuru, Soil investigations were done by Land and Offshore Foundations, Bengaluru).

(iii) Went on to organise a full-day workshop (on 22.6.2024), in which experts presented the various aspects of development and discussed them in separate groups of stakeholders, to formulate a feasible plan for the DPR, and (iv) Submitted an interim report to MUDA (now MDA) in September 2024.

As far as my knowledge goes, even though INTACH has earlier worked on a couple of projects of this nature, the Trust does not comprise a team which can handle matters related to hydrology, ecology and environment, water use, engineering of dams and related structures, which form the essential components of planning, construction and management of runoff harvesting structures (called tanks in the South Indian context).

It can now be guessed that INTACH, no doubt an honest and trustworthy organisation in the field of heritage conservation, believed that it could prepare a DPR by getting the necessary technical support from different consultants and agencies with expertise in the field.

The organisation could procure the first set of reports by spending the first instalment of grants from the Mysuru Development Authority (MDA), which amounted to about Rs. 18 lakh, I understand.

However, it failed to go further ahead since the Trust was left high and dry without any further grants, as a result of MDA itself running into all sorts of troubles and not being in a position to attend to the agreement with the INTACH.

As a compensatory measure, it seems, the Trust submitted to MDA an ‘Outline conservation plan’, which contains certain recommendations that need to be implemented to save the lake from extinction.

Astonishingly, these recommendations are the same as those put forth by the experts involved in the process and emerging as the outcome of the stakeholders’ workshop held earlier.

The recommendations  regarding the feeder canal, included in the interim report, are nearly the same as those presented by me in my report to the DC submitted in 2018.

I believe the Trust will even be able to prepare the DPR if  MDA revives the agreement and takes action to pay the amount due to INTACH.

This is so since the people and the experts in the field have stood by and helped the Trust in all its efforts, with the sole hope that at least an authentic DPR will motivate the Government to act.

However, the moot question that remains unanswered is: How feasible is it to award a project worth over Rs. 60 lakh, to an organisation which has absolutely no technical expertise in the field, particularly when at least a few institutions in the neighbourhood have been working on the issue for over four decades?       

– Name withheld, Mysuru, 22.4.2026

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