Old Town residents demand restoration of heritage tank

Old Town residents demand restoration of heritage tank 

• Bhubaneswar: Residents of Old Town are staging a dharna in front of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) for the last four days demanding restoration of Nandakishore Pushkarini, popular as Kandara Pokhari, a heritage tank at Garage Square.

• The tank that was once spread across five acres has been filled up with garbage and encroached upon. The residents said the BMC did not take any step to restore the pond despite the Orissa high court order.

• The pond restoration work could not be started due to bureaucratic retapes and lack of initiative on the part of the civic authorities leading to the slow death of the water body. "The tank is now filled with garbage and a major portion has been encroached upon. We demand immediate restoration of the water body," said Bhisma Narayan Nayak, president of Ekamra Narayan Manch, a citizen's forum.

• Residents of the locality had moved to the Orissa HC challenging the negligence by the civic body, and in its order passed in 2018 the HC asked the BMC to start restoration of the pond.

• "We have seen the pond when it was filled with water. We used to bath in it when we were kids. Even tourists coming to the city used to bath in it. But due to construction of residential houses around the pond, it has started shrinking. Now the pond has shrunk to less than half of its original area. Gradually, people have started dumping sewerage in it leading to mosquito menace and spread of diseases like dengue and malaria," said Prasant Mohapatra, a 65-year-old resident of the locality.