These parks in Mandya are no-man's-land

CMC spent Rs 1.5 crore from CMs city development scheme

And, if you plan to bring your child for a playtime or hope to find some games for them to remain engaged while you walk for your health, you would be bitterly disappointed.

For, the city municipal council, which did spend some resources on this green area, forgot to add what people look for in it.

Walkway and play area for children and seats for senior citizens to sit and spend time when they are here. Without these, the park is as good as non-existant. Yet, this park on the road leading to Shani temple at Swarnasandra, and more such parks are one of the most priced possessions as for the municipality. The city in all has 21 parks and a majority of them lack some vital thing or the other.

This is still some green space. There are even more parks in the town which don’t even have the bare minimum — plants. These areas are not even protected by grills, fencing or wall so that plants can come up in a protected place. However, strangest of strange thing is, walking path is getting constructed  in these areas which stand least chance of being frequented by anyone, let alone spending time here.

And, with this kind of bad planning, one can even be sure that there is not even space to sit and spend sometime chitchatting with friends.

Ask the authorities, and they would tell that adding facilities like play area, seating and others would be a luxury since they are short on funds. Mandya CMC has spent over Rs 1.5 cr on 15 parks with funds drawn from CM’s Urban and City Development Scheme.

Works that are half complete, have even kept people quite far from these places that were meant to be for their use and recreation. If funds were utilised well, at least some of the parks could have been utilised well. But, the park at Swarnasandra, which stands a classic example of government apathy, has been shut, with a lock greeting the visitors at the gate.

A compound wall has been constructed with the unrelenting efforts of ward member Padmavathy. She says though plans were afoot to do some good work here, funds weren’t sanctioned.

Though the park has been maintained well, basic necessities are a must for people to come here, says an official from horticulture department.

CMC president Arun Kumar blames it on action plan that wasn’t drawn up well. Though there was provision to focus on few parks and develop them, money was squandered on all parks, thus resulting in half-baked look of all of them. Hopefully things would be set right in the next action plan, he says.