bengaluru natural and manmade lakes in bengaluru and other major cities of the state have become victims of unplanned urbanization and encroachment over the years and some are merely historical footnotes with no trace of them the legislative assembly on monday passed a bill paving the way for setting up an authority to protect conserve restore and develop lakes in urban areas despite a clamour by opposition parties for certain changes the government has put in place an authority for the protection of tanks in rural areas the destruction of water bodies is leading to rapid depletion of the groundwater table in urban areas the new body will reverse the trend and exercise regulatory control over civic agencies including bbmp and bda for the prevention and removal of encroachment of lakes and the natural drainage system said forest minister b ramanath rai he piloted the karnataka lake conservation and development authority bill 2014 rai added the act aims to reduce urban sewage flowing into lakes and prepare an action plan in improving and creating habitats for aquatic biodiversity including water birds and wild plants but the opposition bjp and jds highlighted certain lacuna former minister and bjp member s suresh kumar took exception to the definition of a lake in the act which read lake means an inland water body irrespective of whether it contains water or not he said it would make the lake development authoritys job ridiculous and tough since it may have to evict lakhs of people living on layouts developed on several dried lakes by government agencies including the bda former cm and jds leader h d kumaraswamy sought to know how the government will deal with the sree kanteerva stadium and ksrtc bus stand which were built on dried lakes law minister tb jayachandra said the government has made a provision which can remove such difficulties jd s member ysv datta said section 49 could be misused to favour real estate companies which have allegedly built many properties on defunct lakes