At a time when glaciers are shrinking, freshwater bodies are disappearing and springs that once sustained communities are drying up, Srinagar appears to be treating its remaining natural water bodies as vacant land waiting to be reclaimed. The latest concern surrounding Brari Nambal is not merely an environmental violation. It is a disturbing reflection of how easily the city’s natural heritage can be sacrificed in the name of convenience, parking and so-called modernisation.
A portion of the waterbody has reportedly been filled with soil and is now being used for parking vehicles. Photographs from the site show a sizeable stretch of the lagoon apparently converted into a parking space, with cars occupying what should be protected aquatic space.
The most uncomfortable question is not simply who filled the waterbody. It is how the filling was allowed to happen in the first place. The location is reportedly close to the office of the J&K Lake Conservation and Management Authority (LCMA), the very institution entrusted with protecting and conserving the city’s water bodies. If soil was transported, dumped and spread over a sizeable portion of Brari Nambal, was nobody watching? Was the activity carried out overnight? Was it gradual? Did no official inspection take place? Or has the culture of looking away become so deeply embedded that encroachment is noticed only after photographs appear in the public domain?
These are not minor administrative questions. They go to the heart of environmental governance in Srinagar. A waterbody cannot become less of a waterbody simply because somebody has covered it with soil and parked a few vehicles over it. Reclamation does not erase ecological boundaries. What disappears beneath the soil is not merely water—it is habitat, drainage capacity, biodiversity and part of the city’s natural defence against flooding and environmental degradation.
And once such encroachments are allowed to survive, they create a dangerous precedent: fill a little today, occupy a little tomorrow, construct something permanent later, and eventually claim that restoration is impossible. That is precisely how natural assets disappear.
The authorities must therefore resist the temptation of treating the Brari Nambal episode as another routine encroachment case. If the filling is unauthorised, the first requirement should be to identify those responsible and proceed under the applicable law. But accountability cannot stop with the person who dumped the soil. The administration must also determine how the violation remained undetected and who was responsible for monitoring that vulnerable stretch.
Most importantly, the filled portion must be restored. Allowing the reclaimed area to remain because vehicles are already being parked there would amount to rewarding environmental wrongdoing. It would send a message that once an encroachment becomes visible enough and useful enough, the government may eventually surrender to it.
Srinagar has already paid a heavy price for the neglect of its lakes, wetlands, streams and drainage channels. Every lost waterbody weakens the city’s ecological resilience. Every reclaimed patch narrows the space available for water. Every silent encroachment makes the next one easier. Modernisation does not mean replacing every natural space with concrete, soil and parking lots. A city that destroys its natural gifts in the pursuit of modernity is not modernising—it is consuming its own future.
Brari Nambal deserves more than photographs, inspections and official statements after the damage is done. It deserves protection before the next truckload of soil arrives. The government must answer plainly: Who filled Brari Nambal, under whose watch, with whose permission—and when will the soil be removed? The answer should not be another committee. It should be restoration, accountability and a clear warning that Srinagar’s remaining natural assets are not government land waiting to be distributed, reclaimed or converted into parking spaces.
