Behrampore: Garbage dumped along roads near the Hazarduari palace in Murshidabad, the main tourist attraction in the district, has become a source of disappointment for the visitors.

Several tourists this correspondent spoke to said the local civic body should keep the surroundings of this major attraction clean. Nearly 15 lakh tourists visit Hazarduari every year.

Uttam Mondal, a tourist from Chinsurah in Hooghly, who visited the Hazarduari palace last week with his family, said: "We found the road on the southern side of Hazarduari full of garbage. Horse droppings and soiled plates from eateries heaped on the ground was an ugly scene. We felt bad as the Hazarduari palace is the main tourist attraction of Murshidabad as well as Bengal. The civic body should ensure that the surroundings of Hazarduari is kept clean."

The deputy superintendent of the Archaeological Survey of India in charge of Hazarduari, Gopinath Jena, said that the areas beyond the Hazarduari boundary were not in their jurisdiction.

"Earlier this month, I had requested the chairman of the Murshidabad municipality to put big garbage bins on the road and the market. But nothing happened," said Jena.

Asked about the indiscriminate dumping of garbage on the roadside, municipal chairman Biplab Chakraborty, claimed that the road is cleaned regularly. "But I admit that the road is at times dirty when the workers don't come. The workers also don't want to clean the horse dropping. I will try to improve the situation," said Chakraborty.