AARYAN SHARMA
JAMMU: If you find yourself surrounded by mules, horses, cows, buffaloes and even stray dogs, all at one place, you can safely announce you have arrived at the sprawling flower garden, spread over 563 kanals of land on the outskirts of Jammu in Bhour camp area on Miransahib-RS Pura Road.
Eight years ago when the same garden was inaugurated by Jammu region’s first Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, the denizens of ‘city of temples’ felt elated.
For initial months, large number of people started visiting the garden and even large number of tourists were attracted to the location not far away from the city centre.
But after a few months, as the caretakers of the garden started lowering their guard uninvited guests including cows, buffaloes, horses etc started grazing in the park. The local visitors gradually moved out of the garden and reduced number of visits.
Every time the issue of erecting a strong boundary wall was raised by the officials of the Floriculture Department, either they were silenced during the high level meetings or the proposal was thrown in to a dustbin. On occasions even the sanctioned amount was seldom released to carry out necessary repair and decoration work.
In contrast to this, the Tulip Garden in Srinagar was promoted as a hot tourist destination and the State Government spent over Rs 20 crore over it in the past 7 years to attract tourists during the peak season.
Though it was Congress stalwart Ghulam Nabi Azad, who had taken keen interest in developing parks in and around Jammu and had originally floated the idea of developing Jammu’s own flower garden on the lines of world famous Tulip Garden located in the foothill of Zabarwan Hills in Srinagar but successive Kashmir based Chief Ministers failed to take interest in developing the flower garden in Jammu.
The flower garden was conceived for the sole purpose of attracting more tourists camping in Jammu after performing Darshan at the revered shrine of Mata Vaishno Devi.
Ironically, instead of developing the flower garden with every passing year poor planning and lack of will on the part of political establishment of the State led to its downfall.
Facing official apathy, the flower garden was virtually washed away during the flash floods in the nearby Nallah in 2014.
In the absence of protective Bandh or boundary wall, the flood water swept away almost everything planted, installed, erected and constructed on the ground zero.
Only the iron benches were left behind and had to be uprooted to the nearby plot to develop a small portion of the garden for visitors.
At present even the highest resolution photography by a superior satellite won’t find any traces of flower garden on ground zero.
Tourists may have visited the garden in the initial months but as it was converted into a spacious grazing ground by the local farmers in the area even the local visitors started drying up.
The high mast lights, green house, air conditioners, hand pumps, generator set and other machinery worth crores of rupees installed by the Floriculture Department have vanished from the scene. According to official sources, the land was originally allocated for a Botanical Garden as the garden was not anywhere in the project. These sources claimed topographically the land was not suitable for establishing the garden as the area was flood prone.
Soon after the inauguration of this garden, the department had prepared a Detailed Project Report (DPR) from a Delhi based consultancy projecting estimated cost of Rs 28.42 crore and submitted it to the Government in 2009.
They further informed that the department has prepared a revised DPR with an estimated cost of Rs 37.42 crore and submitted it to the Commissioner Secretary Tourism for development of recreational garden at Bhour Camp. Now it remains to be seen whether the sitting Floriculture Minister Priya Sethi who was scheduled to visit the flower garden would accept the challenge and develop the garden and restore it to its original beauty or accord it a step motherly treatment.
