Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra has warned that if de-weeding in the world famous Dal Lake is not executed on 24/7 basis, the alluvial process shall lead to a significant portion of the lake being converted into a land mass as has happened to the Wular Lake near Srinagar.

He was reviewing progress in restoration of beauty of the Lake with chief secretary BB Vyas on Friday and will soon hold a meeting with chief minister Mehbooba Mufti to accelerate the ongoing works.

Consequent to Vohra’s earlier discussions with Mehbooba regarding the rapidly declining visual aspect of the Dal Lake, the latter had asked Vyas, who is also the Chairperson of the High Court appointed Dal Lake Monitoring Committee, to apprise the Governor about the to-date status of the ongoing works.

Governor, along with Chief Secretary and other concerned officers, undertook an inspection of the Dal last evening, particularly traversing the central and the Zakoora end of this beautiful water body. After his extensive tour, the Governor observed that more than half of the water surface of the Lake is no longer visible to the visitors because of the rapidly growing lotus plant and a variety of weeds, particularly because the ongoing de-weeding process is proceeding almost at a snail’s pace.

Vyas made a presentation to the Governor and apprised him about various works underway and the decisions recently taken to speed up the entire process for countering the adverse impact of sewage and solid waste materials flowing into the lake, alongside the efforts underway to remove the weed infestation.

Governor observed that the targeted timeframes and the ongoing pace of work requires to be expedited in respect of establishment of 30 MLD sewage treatment plant at Ishbar, Nishat; (ii) purchase of additional weeding harvesters and skimmers; re-location and rehabilitation of the existing inhabitants on the Dal; re-location of 380 House Boats to Dole Demb; re-alignment of 230 house boats along the Kohnakhan water front; and connecting 180 house boats in the Nageeen Lake to the sewerage network.

The Governor noted that because of the reduction in the pace of de-weeding work in the past two years, the water surface has been rapidly encompassed by the lotus and other growth, resulting in more than half of the water surface not being visible at all to the visitors.

Currently, much more of the lotus and other growth is visible and very little of the lake can be seen except in the area around the Nehru Park. For achieving the required results, for saving the Lake, the pace of every element of the ongoing work shall have to be enhanced at least twenty fold and at least a dozen harvesters and skimmers shall need to be put into operation on virtually round-the-clock basis, besides very significantly stepping up manual de-weeding.

Spokesman of the Raj Bhavan disclosed that Governor plans to have a very early further meeting with the Chief Minister to discuss the outcome of his visit to the Lake.