Not only is this garden a sight of neglect, the fact is that with no official taking care of it, this garden has become a dumping place! And the worse of all is that garbage is set alight in this garden, which the officials of the university say they do not have a clue about.

Dr Gurkirpal Singh, Estate Officer, PAU, when contacted, said, “I have no information about this fire. We follow our rules very strictly and we do not set any garbage alight. It must be a handiwork of some lower staff. I will look into the matter.”

But then the reality is that smoke from the fire of this garden entered the nearby hostel no. 4 and the adjoining Rishi Nagar. The residents of this colony have been long complaining that the smoke emanating from the university has been a problem for them.

The neglect of this garden is so gross that if you walk in the backyard of the university, you come to a pillar about six-feet high. The foundation stone on the pillar has been removed. A plate above this plaque reads, “Bougainvillea Garden’. And what welcomes you behind it is a pile of garbage and overgrowth of cactus and others weeds. A lone pink bougainvillea valiantly tries to live up to the name of the park, but amid all the wild growth and the dirt here, its effort fails.

Some of the ex-faculty of the university, who frequent this place, are pained at the sorry state. One such person, on condition of anonymity, says, ‘’When the botanical garden, bougainvillea garden and other such places were created in the university, they had a meaning, a concept behind it. But now, trees in the university have been felled. The plantation is so synthetically manicured that it seems these plants are not alive.’’