People take a boat ride on the Dal Lake. (File picture)

Srinagar, Jan. 20: For once, the trees were playing truant. So they had to go.

After all, the lake had to be saved.

Jammu and Kashmir High Court’s order to cut the trees around the Dal Lake has come as a lease of life for the shrinking water body as the dense foliage hid dozens of settlements that had sprung up on and around it. With the trees gone, it is now clear how far these localities have encroached — some of them right into the middle of the lake.

Like Moti Mohalla.

A small patch of land on the lake has turned into a playground where some kids were playing cricket. Nearby, a farmer tended his vegetable garden.

Till some time back, the trees were a “camouflage” for thousands of unauthorised dwellings that have over the decades come up on land once part of the lake, said an official. As the encroachment continued, the lake’s area shrunk — from 30 sq km to 10 sq km.

Following the high court’s directive, nearly four lakh trees around the lake were felled despite stiff opposition from the dwellers.

“A public interest litigation was filed in this court after which we issued several directives,” Hasnain Masoodi, the court’s registrar-general, said.

“First, we issued a directive to demarcate the Dal Lake’s area. This is already done. Then we ordered the trees to be cut as they were a camouflage for illegal constructions. We are monitoring the process of the lake’s recovery.”

The lake also faced another problem. As the settlements grew, the water became polluted with human waste that flowed into the lake.

But now that the court has intervened, the lake appears to have a future, said environmentalist and social activist Rafi Ahmad Khan.

“Otherwise, it was dying. The constructions within and around the lake have been growing at an alarming rate with the connivance of officials,” he said. “Now everything is in public glare. Also, there is the fear that the roots of the felled trees might reproduce more trees, so there’s a need to uproot them.”

Efforts to restore the lake’s pristine glory have been on since the last four decades, but without much headway.

In 1977, the government came up with a plan to shift 6,000 families living in 58 localities on and around the lake.

Twenty years passed, but very little happened on the ground.

In 1997, a Rs 472-crore plan — to be funded partly by the Centre and the state government — was sanctioned for the lake’s conservation and rehabilitation of the local residents. “Only a fraction of that amount was made available, the reason the lake continued to suffer,” said an official with the state’s Lakes and Waterways Development Authority.

The residents, however, say they will not leave if they are not rehabilitated first. “We depend on the lake for our livelihood and some of those who have been shifted to other places have lost it,” said Manzoor Ahmad of Moti Mohalla. “If we are not rehabilitated, we will oppose any move to displace us.”