Nurseries to house Games plants

NEW DELHI: An overly enthusiastic attempt to green the city is turning out to be a huge headache for government agencies. More than 40 lakh potted plants — worth about Rs 16 crore — that were placed across the city during the Commonwealth Games will now be transferred to nurseries after which the government will decide what to do with them. Soon after the Games got over, these plants, most of which were initially meant for the Games venues but ended up on roads due to security reasons, were severely vandalised in many areas.Some got stolen even as others perished due to lack of sufficient watering.
NDMC, meanwhile, said its plants will remain where they had been placed during the Games and be allowed to live out their life span. Chief secretary Rakesh Mehta told TOI, ‘‘I heard the plants were being vandalised and have asked for these to be moved to nurseries. We will soon take a call on what is to be done with these. Those belonging to the Parks and Gardens Society will be given back to them.’’
Environment department officials said the plants with the Parks and Gardens Society will be given to resident welfare associations in lieu of financial aid the society had earlier provided.
Civic agencies are also clueless about what is to be done with the 30-odd Shera replicas and Commonwealth Games boards made using plants and flowers across the city. An MCD official said a meeting will be held to decide where to place the plants. An environment expert said the ‘greening’ exercise was sheer waste of money. ‘‘I can’t imagine civic agencies spending any time trying to preserve the plants. Already, many of these have perished. It hasn’t been a week since the Games ended. The government should have had a concrete plan before bringing an entire forest into the city like this,’’ he said.
Civic agencies reasoned that before the Games they had no idea that their efforts would go waste due to security reasons — that plants meant for the venues would not even be allowed inside. ‘‘We had to cancel a lot of tenders at the last minute as we had more plants growing in our nurseries than we could use. Eventually, we had to remove the plants from the pots and place them randomly across the city,’’ said an MCD official.
On the other hand, some agencies left their saplings lying around since there was no space to plant these. At ITO, PWD left close to 100 saplings in plastic wrappings.
Another challenge facing the agencies is watering of the plants. ‘‘Before the Games we had come up with various plans like drip irrigation for the increased green cover in the city. However, none of that materialised and we have no clear idea how we would be able to sustain regular maintenance of these plants,’’ said a PWD official.