Historic Bhuban Mohan Park, once the hub of Rajshahi’s political and cultural activities, has turned into an illegal garage as people continue to park their motorcycles in the park due to lack of monitoring of the Rajshahi City Corporation.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party activists have allegedly started collecting fees from people for parking their motorcycles on the park ground while illegal shoe stores and tea stalls have been set up inside the main entrance and the boundary walls.
The Park houses a Shaheed Minar built in 1953 with names of 69 Language Movement heroes and a stage for cultural and political programmes.
According to the researchers and historians, the era of the Language Movement marked the glorious days of the Bhuban Mohan Park.
‘During the Language Movement, Bhuban Mohan Park served as the primary venue for delivering messages to the townspeople,’ wrote researcher M Shamser Ali in his article titled Bhuban Mohan Park: A Witness to History.
In 2005, the Rajshahi City Corporation reconstructed the park and language veteran Golam Arif Tipu inaugurated the newly constructed Shaheed Minar.
Visiting the park in the Malopara area, in the heart of Rajshahi city, on Tuesday noon, a youth named Md Robin, identifying himself as a brother to Rajshahi city BNP convening committee member Ariful Sheikh Bony, told this correspondent that they had been collecting Tk 10 to 20 from each motorcycle for the past two months.
Ariful Sheikh Bony said that Robin was involved in BNP politics.
Robin said that Rajshahi city BNP senior joint convener Nazrul Huda allowed them to collect the fees from the motorcycles being parked there.
Contacted, Nazrul Huda told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· that the youths were collecting the fees only for guarding the motorcycles to prevent theft.
At present, over half a dozen motorcycle garages are located within one kilometre of Bhuban Mohan Park where several hundreds of motorcycles can be parked for a fee of Tk 20 a day.
Ahmed Shafi Uddin, president of Shushashoner Jonno Nagorik’s Rajshahi district unit, blamed the indifference of the RCC authorities for the commercial use of the historic park.
‘The authorities here are not taking steps to save historical sites’, he said.
ABM Sharif Uddin, chief executive officer of the Rajshahi City Corporation, told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· that he was not aware of the incident of collecting fees from the parked motorcycles in the Bhuban Mohon Park.