With the civic body having delayed development of 22 gardens by over a year,the BMC has now set up a cell to expedite construction and maintenance of these open spaces in the city. The separate engineering cell includes landscape artists,architects and civil engineers,besides officials from the garden department. The cell will oversee the planning and design of the open spaces. In April 2012,the BMC had announced that it would develop parks and gardens in 13 wards and had set aside Rs 55 crore. In fact,this was one of its top goals for the financial year 2012-13. But,the civic body could not spend more than Rs 12 crore. In the current year,it has earmarked Rs 51.33 crore for the garden department. However,the civic administration has been unable to take up construction on these gardens,even this year. According to data from the BMCs garden department,at least 22 civic gardens have been under construction in various phases,well past their deadline. This includes a garden in Santacruz - construction of which began in January 2012 and was supposed to be completed by August 2012. Even after a year,only 60 per cent of the project has been completed. The garden,which is expected to have an airplane,will take two more months to be completed. In a bid to expedite the development of gardens and stop misuse of funds by contractors in the name of construction,the BMC has also revised its policy on construction of gardens. According to the new norms,there will now be a cap of 20 per cent for spending on construction work,while the rest will have to be used for horticulture work. Earlier,80 per cent of the funds meant for construction of gardens were spent on it,while only 20 per cent was used for horticulture. This led to complete concretisation of the garden. Also,the time limit to complete each process,from the proposal to designing the garden,has now been shortened, said S V R Srinivas,Additional Municipal Commissioner. The proposal to construct a garden usually takes very long as it is sent to numerous departments for various clearances. This delays the project by at least a year and a half. We have now planned to cut down this time by half, he added. Meanwhile,the funds allotted for the upkeep of civic gardens have lapsed for the past three years,with a whopping Rs 85 crore being wasted after the civic administration failed to use it to maintain gardens. The large chunks of civic gardens have now turned into crude stretches of land,due to land ownership conflict,encroachment and neglect.
