Look, MCD Has Work Cut Out At Gumti
T
he surface of the park in front of the 700-year-old Lodhi-era monument was a patchwork of disparity: some spots had green grass, others were just dry and bald cracked mud. In a corner, a fallen signboard tried dismally to stay relevant. It once proudly declared that the South Delhi Municipal Corporation had created this park for children's play and recreation. But that promise seemed long broken — quite literally.
The play area resembled a graveyard of rusted remains with a broken slide slumped on its side and round swing frames rusting quietly.
In another corner, scattered alcohol bottles lay strewn in the grass, indicating what happens in the park after sundown. The benches, too, were broken, splintered at the edges, daring anyone to sit on them. The trees appeared to have once been part of a nursery, but now many were uprooted or had dried away.
by Taboola
by Taboola
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Overall, where there should have been a luxuriant green space around a monument, there was a dull, lifeless sprawl.
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Amid this mess stood the office of the
Municipal Corporation of Delhi
and
Delhi Jal Board
, the one the Supreme Court had ordered to vacate. Its gate was shut, but peering in, the clutter was visible, with broken compartments and an overwhelming sense that the place was either ransacked or hastily abandoned. The adjacent temple remained active, but the surrounding area appeared stripped, like a property that had just witnessed a theft.
There were remains of broken cars there, too.
This was when the Supreme Court made it clear on Wednesday that Delhi govt was to notify the Gumti of Shaikh Ali as a protected monument and slammed the municipal corporation for "abandoning this place like a child thrown into the dustbin".
By Thursday afternoon, there was no clean-up. No restoration. No sign of improvement.
When contacted today, MCD officials did not offer a comment.
But for now, the site stands as it was the previous day, held in a freeze-frame of decay and disrepair. What could be reclaimed as a slice of Delhi's history remained a forgotten ruin with a court order hanging over its head.
However, local people were seen working on the restoration of the monument. Area resident and environmentalist Bhavreen Kandhari railed, "That a public monument needed the Supreme Court to force basic maintenance speaks volumes about the collapse of official accountability.
Garbage and rubble and theft of the iron by scrap sellers is not just administrative indifference, but institutional arrogance. After all, it's all our public money that's being wasted in damaging and then rebuilding the structure.
"
She added that waiting for 'formal orders' to clean a historic site was a poor excuse for MCD. "Running city-wide campaigns on tree planting but ripping off a nursery during the monsoons with no thought and plan shows an alarming lack of conscience," said Kandhari.
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