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Halfway through its restoration, Kolleru, once Asia's largest freshwater lake and a notified bird sanctuary is facing a crisis again.

A powerful mafia of fish tank owners, rich landlords and venal politicians is out to foil the Supreme Court-administered plan to restore the lake to its original glory.

The central empowered committee of the Supreme Court had recommended that all the fish tanks in the encroached lakebed be removed but two years and several deadlines later, the order is yet to be fully complied with.

According to latest forest department estimates, these fish tanks are spread over 3000 acres of encroached lakebed and the illegal owners are making a killing by breeding fish.

The forest department, which started work on demarcating the area of the sanctuary, is hamstrung because of the non-cooperation of the revenue officials, who have the land records.

"Despite several requests, no surveyors were provided by revenue department to accompany the forest officials for demarcating the villages and fix the contour of the lake," said a senior forest official, on conditions of anonymity.

In a recent report sent to the Principal Chief conservator of Forests, S K Das, district forest officials noted that their request to the district collectors to provide cadastral maps of the villages located within the lake has also gone unheeded. Without these maps it is impossible to fix the lake boundary.

As if intra-departmental rivalry was not enough, the forest officials had to stop work in some pockets following opposition and threat from tank owners. The main opposition party, Telugu Desam, is backing the tank owners in some stretches and even took out a rally in Akivedu demanding a stop to demarcation work.

"If the Kolleru sanctuary area is not notified, it will encourage other fish tank owners, whose tanks were demolished, to start fresh encroachments. The Supreme Court must set a clear deadline for the administration to complete the process," said environmentalist Prasanna.