A relief for the morning walkers who visit Japanese Garden and Balodyan at Seminary Hills for morning walk/exercise from 6 am to 9 am are excluded from paying charges from December 17 (Tuesday).A meeting of Joint Forest Management (Urban area) Committee held on Monday has discussed the matter and has taken decision.
As per information, the citizens having taken monthly, six-monthly or yearly passes for morning visit at these two parks are still valid. They will get refund of the amount of pass from December 23 to 31 at the ticket counter of Japanese Garden from 8 am to 10 am, as per the committee decision. The Forest Department used to charge entry fees at these parks from May 1, 2019 for providing and protecting the facilities. However, the fees are now exempted at both the places.
Pragati Patil, Vivek Nagbhire, Pramod Thakre, Vinit Arora, Ajinkya Bhatkar, members of committee, V C Gangawane, Range Forest Officer, Seminary Hills, and field staff members were prominently present in the meeting.
Meanwhile, Sandip Joshi, Mayor, recently submitted a memorandum to Dr Prabhu Nath Shukla, DCF, on Friday pressing the demand for exempting fees to morning walkers visting at these parks.