'Need botanical garden, not tennis court'

Students of Government BM College in Barishal yesterday staged a demonstration and formed a human chain, protesting the construction of a tennis court, damaging the decades-old botanical garden on the college campus.

Samajtantrik Chhatra Front organised the event in front of the college.

Sagor Das, secretary of BM College unit of the student organisation presided over the rally.

Speakers at the programme said the garden was situated at the science block of the campus, and was helpful to students of soil science and botany departments. Recently, the college authorities started reconstruction of an abandoned tennis court for teachers, felling a number of large trees and removing a structure of the greenhouse. There were 36 rare species of trees in it, but the college authorities destroyed some of those, they said.

“We protest the move and demand a stop to any construction work in the botanical garden area,” said Manisha Chakraborty, one of the protesters.

 Naturist late Dwijen Sharma established the botanical garden in the 1950s, when he worked at the institution as a teacher, she said.

The principal of the college, Shafiqur Rahman, acknowledged that the work for reconstruction of a tennis court at cost of Tk 4 lakh was continuing at the botanical garden premises, cutting a Mahogany tree. Since both the botanical garden and tennis court existed there before, the college authorities decided to reconstruct the tennis court for teachers of the college, he said.

However, this correspondent found a number of large trees felled.

Barishal Reporters' Unity (BRU) and Barishal Sangskritik Sangathan Samannay Parishad also called upon the authorities to stop reconstruction of the tennis court.

Suvankar Chakrabarty, secretary of Bangladesh Paribesh Andolon (Bapa) in Barishal, said the botanical garden is much more important than a tennis court, so it must be preserved.