Is it absolutely necessary to transcribe this sound with a separate letter or can it just be transcribed with regular l?
Most Indic scripts without nuqta support can’t support this letter.
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It’s necessary to retain both lateral consonants, for if the two are reduced to one, then we won’t be able to distinguish a palmyra tree from a gong (tāla, tāḷa), a weaver of garlands from a builder of pavillions (mālakara, māḷakara), saliva from shaking (kheḷa, khela), water from deafness (ela, eḷa), etc., etc.
If there’s a problem representing the retroflex lateral in some Indic script, then the usual alternatives to ḷa are lla (e.g., culla for cūḷa) and ḍa (e.g., veḍuriya for veḷuriya).
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ḷa does not use nukta in devanāgarī, it uses ळ, similarly ḷha uses ळ्ह
This is in use for Vedic and Pali. The dravidian language scripts as well as some modern Indo-Aryan languages also use this letter/sound.
I meant scripts like Bengali and Gurmukhi that don’t have a letter for ḷa.
According to Wikipedia (Gurmukhi - Wikipedia) Gurmukhi does have one, la with nukta.
Bengali & Assamese can use ল় (for devanāgarī ळ; IAST ḷa) - and Gurmukhī can use ਲ਼ for the same.