A meeting over the issue was convened recently in Gandhinagar and it was decided to distribute the project among different authorities, including the Vadodara district collectorate, Irrigation department and others. While the ponds in the city areas will be looked after by the municipal corporation, the ones which are located in the district will be taken care of by the collectorate.

“We observed that the city ponds were in a bad shape and lot of encroachments had come up around them. We will remove those encroachments. In the second phase, we will take the help of the Irrigation department for deepening and widening of the ponds. We will also construct compound walls and the ponds will be turned into places to visit,” said a senior official at the VMC commissioner office.

According to details, out of the total budget of the project, 10 per cent will be shelled out by the local MLAs, while the rest 90 per cent will be given by the state government. “In the initial phase, we have decided to focus on 15 ponds and for that, we have assigned five MLAs, who would take care of the project in coordination with other agencies,” said another VMC official.

The VMC had recently mooted an ambitious project to beautify the Sursagar Lake. “We are certainly going to develop Sursagar. Funding is not a problem. Similarly, development of other ponds will start soon, as we are expecting a financial aid of over Rs 1 crore from the state government,” said a senior official in the Corporation.

The condition of ponds in the city is deplorable and the authorities have paid no attention to it. In many areas, societies have been built by filling the lands and that has resulted in flooding during the monsoon.