Historic Coronation Park turns into ‘swampland’
NEW DELHI: The Coronation Park with the eponymous iconic pillar and Raj-era statues in north west Delhi’s Burari area, where ‘New Delhi’ was born in 1911, is anything but visitor-friendly.
The Coronation Pillar is a monumental obelisk as the third Delhi Durbar was held on this very site, where King George V and Queen Mary were coronated as the emperor and the empress of India on December 12, 1911, and the British monarch had also announced shifting the capital from Calcutta to Delhi.
On World Tourism Day, the marble-made grand statues stood stoically amid a mess created by the monsoon rains.
To make matters worse, the public were banned entry on Sunday, who cited “lodging of paramilitary personnel” on the premises as the site sits next to Burari grounds, both owned by DDA, where farmers protesting against the new farm laws had earlier camped amid heavy security deployment.
A senior DDA official, said, “No such order has been issued. We will convey it to the ground staff, to not stop anyone from entering the park.”
Delhi-based heritage enthusiast Astha Khanna, 25, was not allowed entry on Sunday.
“When we asked the guards to show an official order, they said, there wasn’t any,” she said, adding that after much pleading, she was allowed in for just 10 minutes.
“The park has worsened considerably since the first lockdown,” said Khanna, adding, the place has potential to become a ‘tourism destination’ and generate revenue for the government.