Chandigarh: The Rock Garden is not just another landmark in Chandigarh. It’s a slice of the city’s history. So, when the UT administration tried to tear down one of the walls of sprawling 20-acre sculpture garden last month to comply with a court order, residents took to the streets.
The controversy began last year when the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the Chandigarh administration on 25 September to clear a wall protruding from a corner of the Rock Garden to streamline traffic flow to and from the high court.
The garden is nestled between the high court complex and Sukhna Lake. The dividing road between the court and the garden is often jammed because of a huge inflow of vehicles entering and exiting the court premises.
When the Chandigarh administration tried to execute the court’s orders last month, a group of citizens rallied together to protest against the demolition of the wall, saying that it was an integral part of the iconic site—a unique piece of art made from recycled waste. They said that any damage to the wall constructed in the same design as the Rock Garden’s other walls—made out of waste drums—was an attack on the city’s identity.
The wall’s demolition also involved cutting down 100 trees, prompting the people to hug the trees in a protest symbolic of the “Chipko” movement.
The Chandigarh administration said the wall technically wasn’t a part of the Rock Garden, but a “mere wall” separating the forest area from the high court campus. Undeterred by the protests, the administration broke down the wall in the dead of the night between 9 and 10 March to avoid confrontation with the protesters.
But the matter is far from settled. Protests continue and plans are reportedly afoot to take the battle to the courts.
What is the entire controversy and why has the breaking down of a “mere wall” created such a furore? ThePrint explains.
Historical background
Chandigarh is independent India’s first planned city, considered the brainchild of Jawaharlal Nehru and designed by celebrated French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier.
At the heart of Corbusier’s design was the Capitol Complex—the power centre—where the Vidhan Sabha, Secretariat and High Court were constructed in the 1950s against the backdrop of the Shivalik Hills. A series of monuments—the Open Hand, Geometric Hill, Tower of Shadows and Martyrs’ Memorial (incomplete though)—were built in the Capitol Complex later.
No other construction was allowed around the complex to maintain the sanctity of Corbusier’s design. Over the years, a wooded area surrounding the complex was declared a reserved forest.
But that didn’t deter a young public works department employee, Nek Chand. Sometime in the late 1950s, he began creating a series of artworks from waste and construction debris in the out-of-bounds forested area between the Capitol Complex and Sukhna Lake, which had then been freshly dug up.
He cycled in and around Chandigarh, gathering waste and construction debris to fufill his creative vision. He worked in secrecy in a secluded spot of the Capitol Complex, using a temporary PWD store that he was in charge of.
When his “illegal construction” was discovered in 1971, Chand’s creation had spread to 8.76 acres of land, replete with alleys, walls, twisted walkways, and human and animal sculptures built using broken glass, pottery, bricks, ceramic, bangles and oil drums apart from the concrete, bitumen and steel that he had used from the PWD store.
Chand’s unique creation left the administration with little choice, but to recognise its brilliance and throw it open to the public as the “Rock Garden”. The garden was formally inaugurated in 1976.
Encouraged by the recognition, and eventually supported by the government, Chand began expanding the project. By the late 1980s, the garden covered an additional 12.32 acres of land in the woods around the Capitol Complex, with its periphery creeping towards the High Court complex.
But the garden ran into a wall of controversy in the 1980s.
In 1988, a part of the garden faced demolition, when the Chandigarh administration came up with a proposal to create a botanical park between the high court and Sukhna Lake, authors Soumyen Bandyopadhyay and Iain Jackson wrote in a 2007 book, The Collection, the Ruin and the Theatre.
The Bar Association moved the high court, saying that the continuing expansion of the garden was encroaching upon the court’s parking space, while deviating from the master plan of the city. The book says Chand objected to this proposal in court and the Bar Association withdrew its petition.
Another attempt was made to demolish part of the garden in 1990 to build a road to a nearby village.
“Bulldozers were sent in to start the demolition process on 20 April, 1990, but a ‘human shield’ of Chandigarh residents prevented the bulldozers from working… Chand took the event as a personal attack, claiming that the whole episode was done to humiliate him,” Bandyopadhyay and Jackson wrote.
The same year, the Chandigarh administration formally set boundaries for the Rock Garden and issued Chand a plan that limited the garden to 21.08 acres, beyond which he could not go.
The third phase of Rock Garden was inaugurated in 1993, and a few years later, the administration allowed it to be used for its public events and as a marriage venue. A special entrance was created for guests and VIP vehicles to enter the garden to attend the events.
Chand, who headed the Rock Garden Society set up by the administration, constantly complained about the lack of maintenance and staff shortage. His relationship with the Chandigarh administration worsened when he openly wrote against Pradip Mehra, an IAS officer who served as the administrator, and complained about not being given funds to maintain the garden.
In 2015, the administration decided not to allow marriages and entertainment functions in the Rock Garden, although it continued to allow the space to be used for its own public events.
When Chand passed away in 2015, Chandigarh’s home secretary became the ex-officio chairman of the Rock Garden Society.
The administration only grudgingly accepted the garden as part of Chandigarh’s heritage though it was right next to the high court.
An expert committee constituted by the administration to study Chandigarh’s Heritage said in 2012 that Chand’s creativity had become repetitive by the time he reached the third phase of his creation.
“Even though it is a product of the creative climate generated by the city itself, the Rock Garden has added a noteworthy aspect to Chandigarh’s world-renowned stature,” the committee wrote.
“However, the garden’s striking innovativeness, which lay in its first phases until about 1980 and was the creator’s ingenuity in using paltry resources artistically, is no longer perceptible in its expansion, which has been more and more repetitive using substantial government funds,” it added.
The committee recommended halting further growth of the garden, describing it as a “significant work of what has been called ‘outsider art’” that should be preserved in its current state.
In 2016, the Capitol Complex was declared a “transnational World Heritage” property by UNESCO. The Rock Garden, however, was not included in it.
The current controversy
The current row began in 2023, when a high court employee, Vinod Dhatterwal, filed a public interest litigation seeking the implementation of a long-pending “holistic development plan” of the court. The petitioner argued that the plan, which proposed constructing multi-storey buildings to meet the court’s requirement for additional space, had been approved by the high court administration years ago, but was never implemented.
After multiple hearings on providing additional space for administrative offices and parking, a division bench headed by Chief Justice Sheel Nagu ordered the SSP Traffic Chandigarh on 23 August, 2024, to submit a traffic circulation plan for the high court to ease the flow of traffic to and from the court.
The plan was submitted to the court a week later. On 23 September, the then chief architect Kapil Setia informed the court that it intended to widen the slip road near the Rock Garden to ease traffic. The court asked Setia to also consider the possibility of “straightening the Rock Garden gate area”.
The court was referring to straightening the protruding section of the wall next to the Rock Garden’s boundary wall, which had a special entry for VIP access to the third phase of the garden.
“The jutting out corner of the Rock Garden is causing problems and bottleneck creating congestion of traffic and, therefore, the UT Administration is further directed to ensure conversion from forest to non-forest purpose the area lying within the jutting out corner of Rock Garden,” the court noted two days later, when it resumed hearing of the case.
Rajiv Mehta, chief architect of Chandigarh, told ThePrint that a joint group of stakeholders, including the administration and bar association members, visited the section of the wall that was jutting out.
“Everyone was in consensus that the clearing of the portion, around 2,200 square feet enclosed by the wall, would not only create more space for parking, but also straighten the road from where hundreds of cars exit daily from the high court, which would lead to a smoother flow of traffic,” Mehta said.
Since the clearance required cutting down over 100 trees, the administration sought permission from the Indian government to convert the land from forest to non-forest use.
The court was informed that Chandigarh administration had also paid environmental compensation of Rs 22.54 lakh to the Government of India, and also decided to plant three times the number of trees to be cut down in an alternative area, as required by the rules.
On 24 January, Satya Pal Jain, the Additional Solicitor General of India, told the court that the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change had permitted the conversion of 0.0272 hectares and 0.2159 hectares of forest land “falling within the jutting out portion” of the Rock Garden for non-forest use on 16 January.
At the next hearing on 6 February, Amit Jhanji, senior standing counsel for the Union Territory administration, informed the court that all formalities related to tree cutting, excavation and replantation for the Rock Garden’s jutting-out portion would be completed by the end of April 2025.
Jhanji added that the cleared area would provide parking for about 100 four-wheelers, with plans to create additional space for 200 more vehicles on the open stretch between the “jutting out portion of Rock Garden” and its parking.
The court directed that work should begin and progress should be reported at the next hearing.
Also Read: In Punjab’s rejection of Centre’s agri marketing policy, another showdown over APMCs in the making
Protests
In the last week of February, bulldozers were called in to demolish the disputed portion of the wall, but as the news spread, several protesters led by members of the “Save Chandigarh” group arrived at the site. The administration had to temporarily put off its operation.
Among the protesters were former Allahabad High Court Chief Justice S.S. Sodhi, former Justice Nirmaljit Kaur, senior advocate M.L. Sarin and environmentalist Paveela Bali.
Chand’s son, Anuj Saini, who also joined the protest, told media persons that the gate through which his father used to enter the Rock Garden was being demolished. “It is heartbreaking to see the administration dismantling this space, which was built with immense love and dedication,” he said.
Chandigarh MP Manish Tewari came out in support of the protesters with a post on social media platform X.
“The Rock Garden is a part of the evolution of Chandigarh—a young if not an infant city by the standards of antiquity. The balance between aesthetics and development is always a tough equilibrium for a growing, developing and emerging city,” Tiwari wrote. “The trick is to find the Golden Mean. However the exchange between demolishing even a wall of the Rock Garden and expanding a parking lot is a bit of a stretch even by the standards of development absolutists. We must preserve, protect, promote and proliferate the aesthetics of Chandigarh like the Rock Garden.”
The Rock Garden is a part of the evolution of Chandigarh- a young if not by an infant city by the standards of antiquity.
The balance between aesthetics and development is always a tough equilibrium for a growing , developing and emerging city .
The trick is to find the… pic.twitter.com/B1O0yJsv2D
— Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) February 28, 2025
However, not every Chandigarh resident supports the protesters.
Senior advocate Anupam Gupta, who has been living in the city for decades, told ThePrint that the “obsession with the Rock Garden was one-sided and unreal”.
“Lawyers and litigants cannot be treated as trespassers or encroachers, that too in the high court. Given the footfall, decongesting the entry and exit points in the high court is a crying need,” he said. “Even otherwise, the Capitol Complex predates the Rock Garden by two decades and has far greater heritage value. The architectural integrity of the Rock Garden remains unimpaired.”
During a hearing on 7 March, Jhanji showed the court a map of the Rock Garden boundary wall that jutted out and caused heavy traffic congestion within the high court premises. Jhanji told the court the wall wasn’t a part of the Rock Garden, but merely a wall separating the forest area from the high court campus.
“Mr Jhanji also submits that UT Administration is going ahead with demolition of this jutting-out wall and straightening the same to create space for parking. This work, Mr Jhanji assures, shall be completed latest by 30.04.2025,” noted the court’s order.
Complying with the order, the Chandigarh administration tore down the wall on the intervening night of 9 and 10 March.
Shocked protesters intensified their stir, alleging that the Chandigarh administration was misleading the court about the number of trees to be cut as well as the portions to be demolished.
The protesters demanded an independent on-site survey by the forest department to confirm their claims that the move was against the city’s master plan which had earmarked the area as green space.
What lies ahead
On 7 March, Chandigarh residents Tarlochan Singh and Pallav Mukherjee, representing the protesters, approached the court to become parties in the case, but were asked by the high court to file a separate petition—a move now under consideration by the protesters.
Mukherjee, a leading architect, told ThePrint that the Chandigarh administration is making a fresh mistake to cover up for an older one.
“They are making heritage pay for their oversights. The parking around the high court is a mess not because of the high court, but because of the administration. Now in order to park just another 100 cars, they have chopped trees, broken a heritage wall of the Rock Garden,” said Mukherjee. “By doing so, the administration is showing complete indifference to Nek Chand and his creation that put Chandigarh as a tourist destination on the world map.”
The Chandigarh administration, however, disputes the claim that the wall was built by Nek Chand himself.
“The wall which was dismantled is not a part of the Rock Garden. This wall is not even the boundary wall of the Rock Garden. This wall begins from a corner of the outer boundary of the Rock Garden, and continues in some length as a drum wall, and then gives way to a barbed wire,” Chandigarh’s Chief Architect Mehta told ThePrint. “The wall and the barbed wire enclosed a reserve forest. Only that portion of the wall has been dismantled, which enclosed an area jutting out into the high court parking.”
Mehta said that though there was no doubt that the wall was built in the same design as the rest of the Rock Garden’s boundary wall with waste drums stuck together with cement and bitumen, it is not part of the Rock Garden.
“In fact, we have no idea why this wall was built. But it was built in a manner to include a little over 2,200 square feet of space outside the Rock Garden, where apart from the trees, there were some power transformers. It had no sculptures, etc,” Mehta said.
He said that the wall could have been built to enclose a storage space for waste material used for the construction of the garden, to enclose the transformers or to keep animals from straying into the high court from the forest side.
“Whatever the purpose of the wall, it is not a part of the Rock Garden. It is outside the boundaries of the Rock Garden as laid down in its final plan of 1991,” Mehta added.
Mukherjee, however, dismissed the administration’s rationale for tearing down the wall, saying that creating space for another 100 cars wasn’t going to solve the high court’s parking problems.
“Tomorrow, another 500 cars will come in. Will they start demolishing the secretariat or the Vidhan Sabha to make way for more parking?” asked Mukherjee. “Is breaking heritage structures the solution? Instead of coming up with innovative ways of handling the increase in the number of cars, all the administration can come up with is cutting trees, breaking a heritage wall, damaging world-class structures and reporting their effectiveness to the high court.”
C.B. Ojha, the chief engineer of the city, told ThePrint that once the jutting portion is cleared, a similar wall with the same structure and design will be constructed in a straight line. “It is exactly the kind of wall that has been dismantled. Only we have removed the kink out of that straight line,” he said.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
Also Read: With SAD in decline, a ‘radical’ Akali Dal emerges. What this means for Punjab politics