Evening in major BDA parks back to life after cyclone

Bhubaneswar: City parks, the green recreational zones, which were ravaged by the furious winds of the severe cyclonic storm Fani on May 3, have come back to near normal pre-cyclone situation with many parks are opening to evening visitors.

Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Park and Kharavela Park are planning to allow visitors during evening hours tomorrow.

Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) manages ten major city parks which are with area between 5 acres and 20 acres and more than 50 smaller parks inside colonies across the city.

While the evening time was open to public at Biju Patnaik Park, popularly known as Forest Park on May 19, Indira Gandhi Park and Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Parks were opened on May 20.

Buddha Jayanti Park and Netaji Subhash Parks were opened on May 21 and by tomorrow all major BDA parks will have both morning and evening times open to visitors.

BDA Chief Horticulturist Ashokananda Dhar said, “Though in many parks after clearing of tracks people started coming for morning walk on their own, officially we cleared all the walking paths and jogging tracks by May 14. However, installing and repairing the electrical equipment and machines took some extra time.”

The BDA chief horticulturist also added, “Apart from the 10 major parks managed by us, we have another 50 odd small parks. While in more than 25 smaller parks the restoration work is complete, in the rest 50 percent smaller parks BDA will do the needful in a two days’ time.” 

The major parks were cleaned with deployment of 10 excavators and more than 200 staff by BDA. The green debris was lifted with the help of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation.

The development authority has also started using the green waste for composing so that organic manure could be produced for the saplings in future.