10 Fani-Battered Parks Reopen In Odisha Capital

Bhubaneswar: Ten parks in Odisha’s capital will again buzz with life as these will be opened to the public on Sunday.

These include the Biju Patnaik Park, Indira Gandhi Park, Budhha Jayanti Park, Mahatma Gandhi Park, Kelucharan Mohapatra Park, Kharavela Park, Madhusudan Park, Netaji Subash Chandra Bose Park, K-8 Kalinga Nagar Park and Shyamprasad Mukherjee Park.

“Restoration work in these parks is almost complete. The employees have been working on a war-footing for the past two days. The debris have also been cleared,” a senior BDA official said.

Ten JCBs and 200 employees were engaged in restoration of the parks destroyed by Cyclone Fani, the official said.

The parks, which serve as lungs in the concrete jungle that is Bhubaneswar are gradually becoming used to being thronged by thousands of people in the early morning hours and evenings. After natural calamity struck on May 3, destroying green foliage and causing untold damage to parks, residents were left with no choice than to wait till normalcy was restored.

Biju Patnaik Park was the worst-hit. Indira Gandhi Park, opposite the state secretariat, Buddha Jayanti Park and Madhusudan Das Park also suffered extensive damage.

Cyclone Fani has not only uprooted and brought down trees, it has also damaged boundary walls and other infrastructure in around 120 parks, including the ten major ones that are spread over five acres each. It has also shattered swings used by children to play and recreate, official sources said. Of these parks, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation manages 63 while the BDA looks after the rest.