Eco Park's sculpture garden likely to be opened in a month

The Eco Park in New Town will soon have a sculpture garden and the final touches are being given as it is likely to be opened within a month.

There will be a light and sound programme for the visitors and this will take another couple of months to be completed.

The garden will depict the history of Bengal from Sepoy Mutiny in 1857 to the time of Satyajit Roy. A group of artists created the wall reliefs which have been supervised by Suvaprasanna.

Apart from these, there will also be some statues. The Bengal renaissance and its effects has been portrayed through reliefs. Attempts have been made to make the sculpture garden interesting and attractive for people of all ages.

The garden is the first-of-its-kind in Bengal and is a Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation's (HIDCO) initiative.

Through light and sound, the history of Bengal will be depicted. Except Victoria Memorial Hall, the light and sound programme which was started at Latbagan in Barrackpore where Sepoy Mutiny first started in eastern India had to be stopped after the equipment developed some snag.

It may be mentioned that after coming to power in 2011, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took special initiatives to make Eco Park a centre of tourist attraction and renamed the park as Prakriti Tirtha. There is a huge water body covering 112 acre.

Over the year, Prakriti Tirtha has come up as a major tourist destination where the footfall recorded is over 50 lakhs since the end of 2012. There are flower gardens and special arenas for games and a joggers' ally.

There is a replica of the Ghoom railway station of the heritage Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) and also a dummy of the toy train. Soon, the area housing the seven wonders of the world will be opened to the visitors. The USP of Eco Park is cleanliness where visitors are fined for littering or throwing soiled papers outside dustbins.