Girl wants parks in Shimla: Notice issued to state government

SHIMLA - Acting for the second time on the plea of a 10-year-old girl, the Himachal Pradesh High Court Thursday issued notice to the government over the lack of recreational places in this state capital.

Issuing notice to chief secretary Rajwant Sandhu, a division bench of Chief Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice V.K. Ahuja observed: Its a very important matter as it concerns growing children, but it appears that owing to lack of inter-departmental coordination, there is no perceptible progress in the matter.

Therefore, direction to the chief secretary to convene a meeting of departments concerned and other stakeholdersfile an affidavit as to action to be taken in a time-bound manner, the bench said.

The court directed the chief secretary to file the affidavit within a month and listed the matter for hearing April 4.

In September 2010, a division bench of Chief Justice Joseph and Justice Rajeev Sharma in September 2010 had taken cognizance of a letter written by 10-year-old Vipasha Srivastva to the chief justice and had issued notice to Shimla’s civic body.

The Municipal Corporation of Shimla, in its reply Oct 28, 2010 said it has no funds to create recreational places for children and the public.

Vipasha, a Class 5 student, wrote in her letter: Today, Shimla is a concrete jungle with no parks, open spaces or grounds for children, forcing them to remain glued to television, which we know is not good for our health.

She urged the chief justice to ensure that playgrounds are provided to children in the town so that they are not glued to the TV all the time.

Planned for a maximum population of 16,000, the Queen of Hills, as Shimla was fondly called by the British, now has more than 200,000 residents. High-rise buildings and other development projects have gobbled up much of its green patches, besides leading to the problems of water scarcity and parking.