Visitors continued to throng Lalbagh on Friday, a day after the annual Independence Day flower show concluded.
The visitors were seen capturing the flower arrangements in hurry before they were cleared. Friday being the weekend and holiday on account of Varamahalakshmi festival, a lot of people came to Lalbagh, said Shabnam, a housewife. “It would have been good if the flower show was extended for another three to four days,” she said.
Lalbagh authorities maintained that the flower shows are held only twice in a year as it is a time-consuming affair. “It takes at least four months to put up a flower show, and since Lalbagh is attached with a heritage tag, we need to take safety measures. For the annual Republic Day flower show next year, we will start making arrangements from October this year itself,” said Gunawantha J, director, Lalbagh Horticulture Department. The show is organised jointly by the Lalbagh Horticulture Department and Mysore Horticultural Society.
"More than 4.5 lakh people turned up for the show held between August 7 and 15. We spent a total of Rs 1.20 crore last year and made a collection worth Rs 1.06 crore.
For this year's show, we are yet to calculate the amount we spent. For each division such as flower arrangement, metal detector and ambulance, we had invited a separate tender," said Gunawantha.
He said Rs 1.22 crore was collected from the flower show, and the increase in the collection this year is due to the hike in entry fee. The price of the entry tickets for adults on holidays (August 9, 10, 11 and 15) had been increased to Rs 50 from Rs 40, this year.
The Lalbagh authorities are, however, disappointed that there was a pile-up of garbage on the premises despite deploying 40 more Pourakarmikas to clear the waste.
The rain and continued flow of visitors hampered the garbage clearance, an official said.