New Delhi: 62-year-old Jagdish Kumar, resident of Vishwas Nagar, has a fixed daily routine. Every evening, he strolls around the Lake Park in East Delhi’s Welcome – not too far from his home. Renovated in recent years, the park features landscaped paths and even an amphitheater. But it is missing one important thing – the lake (lake) after which it was named.
It has been almost four years since water was drained from the lake as part of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) plan for renovation and redevelopment of the area. However, the final work – filling it with water from the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) has not been completed yet. Meanwhile, the 62-acre crater is barren, filled with weeds, burnt grass and debris, serving as a playground for children.
This example perfectly reflects the sustainability of conservation and restoration of Delhi’s water bodies in recent years. The 2021 census by Delhi State Wetland Authority (DSWA) identified 1,045 water bodies in Delhi. However, a subsequent physical inspection found that many of them were either non-existent due to encroachment, or had completely dried up. In April 2024, the Delhi government added 322 sites based on satellite imagery, increasing the total to 1,367.
In 2021, DSWA announced plans to notify 20 major water bodies, including Welcome Lake, as wetlands. It gives legal protection to the water body, clearly demarcates its boundaries, and even allows the formulation of Integrated Management Plans (IMPs) to receive funds from the Center for their protection and rejuvenation.
A deadline of 2022 was set for notification of the list which also included Hauz Khas Lake, Bhalswa Lake, Smriti Van (Kondali), Smriti Van (Vasant Kunj), Tikri Khurd Lake and Najafgarh Lake.
Five years later, DSWA has not notified even a single water body as a “wetland”.
Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said this was due to delays by land-owning agencies, especially in sharing details of water bodies. “We are only the nodal agency, but the actual details of the water body, including its total area, catchment area, its water sources for example and the demarcation exercise, have to be done only by the land-owning agencies,” said an official associated with the DSWA. The body was constituted in April 2019 under the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017 to identify and protect water bodies.
“Detailed brief documents have to be prepared, but agencies have failed to share the brief documents despite several reminders or have shared incomplete information in many cases,” the official said.
For example, Welcome Lake, he said, is “closest” to the process, but the MCD has not yet shared some of the information that was sought from it. “Once submitted, it will be scrutinized and then the process of notification can be formally initiated.”
The second issue is that DSWA meetings are held infrequently. The last meeting was called for 2024, with no formal meeting in 2025. No meeting has been scheduled yet in 2026. On the website, meanwhile, one can only access the minutes of the meetings till September 10, 2021.
In January last year, the Union Environment Ministry had told the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that the work to restore water bodies across Delhi was being coordinated between various land-owning agencies. Of these, in the first phase, 631 water bodies were to be rejuvenated by December 31, 2024. This included removal of encroachments, desilting and clearing of invasive species as per the directions of the Delhi High Court.
Hearing a petition seeking protection of wetlands, on April 8, the court had directed the government to ensure that all wetlands are assessed for maintenance by the end of 2024 – a deadline it has long missed.
On World Wetlands Day this year, Delhi Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said the government’s efforts to protect water bodies are ongoing, adding that the process of identification and demarcation of boundaries of 856 water bodies has already been completed. He said restoration and rejuvenation work has so far been completed in another 174, tenders to protect and revive another 22 water bodies have been issued recently, and detailed estimates are being prepared for 20 more such water bodies in Delhi.
Sirsa had also said that the Blue Lake in Asola is being considered as Delhi’s first “Ramsar” site – a designated wetland of international importance under the treaty signed in Ramsar, Iran in 1971.
Welcome, Lake of Neglect
On HT’s visit to Welcome Lake on February 3, locals said the water body exists only on paper. “I remember it last had water in 2022 and even then, it was dirty water. This water was released on the pretext that the lake bed would be cleaned, dug up and deepened. The entire area was beautified, but the water was never released,” said Jagdish Kumar. The lake fills with rain water during the monsoon months, but the water rarely lasts.
“Since there is not enough water in it, the lake starts drying up again in two or three days,” Kumar said. “Green spaces and lakes are rare in East Delhi and if it had water, this place could have been a breath of fresh air.”
Amardeep Singh, a resident of Dilshad Garden, said that when he last visited in 2024, the lake was dry. “It is still the same. The park is now more known for kite flying, as children come here and use the dry lake bed as a place for kite flying.”
An MCD official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that, although the horticulture department has completed its share of work in the Welcome Lake project, the STP is not yet fully operational as the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) has diverted the untreated water coming for it to another project.
“The construction of the lake was completed about one and a half years ago, the STP was also commissioned and the lake was filled with water, but due to diversion the STP is not operational,” the official said. DJB did not respond to HT’s requests for comment.
Experts say the lack of progress in notifying wetlands in the capital has wider implications. “The five-year period for notifying any wetland is quite significant and that is the situation in the capital, where every project has thousands of eyes on it,” said Paras Tyagi, who runs Cycle India, a capital-based NGO, and is fighting to protect a local water body in his village in south-west Delhi’s Budhela.
He objected to the construction of a community center by the Delhi government’s Sahitya Kala Parishad on a site about 1.5 acres wide and the matter is still in the court. Tyagi said, “It is somewhat ironic that a dry water body is being notified as a wetland and the water bodies that have water are not being protected by the DSWA. Ensuring water sources, especially through treated water, is not a difficult task.”
Manu Bhatnagar, principal director of the natural heritage division of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), who has previously worked on the restoration of Hauz Khas Lake, said the plan for Welcome Lake includes using a significant area of the project site for phyto-remediation.
“Even that was completed, but for some reason or the other, they have failed to release the STP water here,” Bhatnagar said. Although, five years is a long time, we also have to see that wetland rules require specifications, such as contour level, highest flood level (HFL) and there should be no encroachment within a certain radius for the wetland. In many urban water bodies, basins, catchments and even HFLs are difficult to define.
Till the time of publishing the news, no response was received from Sirsa.
The rejuvenation of the Welcome Lake was funded through various central and state schemes and the revamped site was inaugurated in February 2022, ahead of the last Lok Sabha elections. The restoration of the lake was planned in 2012 by the then East MCD ₹It was allocated Rs 22 crore under the Trans-Yamuna Area Development Board. In the first phase, ₹Rs 7 crore allocated for an STP. This was followed by an amphitheater, administrative block and a beautiful footpath.
In June 2022, the MCD announced that it would rejuvenate 21 ponds and water bodies across the city under the Amrit Sarovar Mission of the central government. ₹47.66 crores were sanctioned. Even though the civic body said work has been completed at 18 sites, a large number of sites at several places like Welcome, Aya Nagar and Ghazipur are lying dry.
Another official said the remaining water bodies under the mission, where there is water shortage, will soon see progress. “We are also hoping to fill some water during the monsoon period.”
