Bengaluru: A Division Bench comprising Justice N. Kumar and Justice B. Srinivase Gowda, on Thursday,  directed the Chief Secretary, Law Secretary and the Advocate General to be personally present in court on April 13. They passed this order as the officials ignored the court’s orders on encroachment of the Sarakki lake.

The court was hearing a contempt of court petition filed by Sarakki Lake Area Improvement Trust.

The petitioner complained that B.R. Dayananda, tahsildar (Bangalore South), has allegedly disobeyed the undertaking given to a Division Bench, headed by Chief Justice D.H. Waghela on August 5, 2014, that all the identified encroachers would be evicted from the lake bed area within six weeks.

It was also alleged that the tahsildar, in an earlier contempt of court proceedings initiated by the Trust in October last year, had given an undertaking on December 8, 2014, that the delay in eviction of encroachers was due to administrative reasons and had sought four weeks’ time to evict the encroachers. Based on this undertaking, the court had dropped contempt proceedings, granting him four weeks.

The Trust filed the present contempt petition as the tahsildar had failed to evict the encroachers. During the hearing on Thursday, the Bench prima facie found that the officials were “hand-in-glove” with the encroachers as State had acted in a callous manner in connection with the litigation filed by some encroachers against the eviction process, and directed the presence of the top functionaries of the State.