There will be no Republic Day flower show at Lalbagh for the second straight year.
The Horticulture Department decided to cancel the show after the state government announced fresh Covid curbs. It’s the fourth flower show that has been cancelled at Bengaluru’s premier lung space since the pandemic began. The other two cancelled flower shows were to have been held around Independence Day in the past two years.
The department, in association with the Mysore Horticulture Society, had looked forward to hosting the flower show around Republic Day this year. It initially planned to theme the show around ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’ but later decided to pay floral attributes to Kannada actor Puneeth Rajkumar following his sudden death on October 29 last year.
The authorities had even procured about 40,000-50,000 flowering and leafy plants and raised a few thousand more in-house, a source in the department said.
No central venue
Unlike the regular show that takes place inside the Glass House, authorities had planned to hold the exhibition in various parts of Lalbagh in order to avoid crowding.
But the recent surge in Covid-19 cases has put paid to all these plans. “We have to abide by the government’s Covid rules. All the plants, both procured and raised internally, will be used at the botanical garden,” a senior official in the Horticulture Department said.
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