Success at Eden Gardens has been soured by the failure at Banabitan.

The government?s efforts to augment revenue by introducing an entry fee for visitors to the 50 acres of green in Salt Lake has been put paid to by a host of dignitaries, who use the park for their morning constitutional.

The department has been successful in slapping entry fees on morning-walkers at Eden Gardens and five other parks without any trouble.

But Banabitan has to be an exception, as it is also the park for the creme de la creme.

Among the regular visitors are Joykrishna Ghosh (confidential assistant to Jyoti Basu), Bhagabati Prasad Banerjee (retired judge of Calcutta High Court), Goutam Chakraborty (IPS), Rachpal Singh (retired IPS), Nisith Adhikari (law minister), Sourin Roy (former chief secretary) and a host of industrialists.

The forest department probably did not keep in mind the list of who?s who while deciding on the entry fee.

The government, however, would not say who among the VVIP patrons of the 15-year-old park had objected to the entry fee. ?Some objections had reached us and we are yet to introduce the fee,? was all forest minister Jogesh Barman would say.

The park ? which has a huge waterbody and several costly trees, such as saal and mahogany ? is visited by more than 2,000 people every morning. The decision to introduce the fees at Banabitan and Eden Gardens were taken almost simultaneously, around a year ago.

Entry fees have also been imposed on five parks in the districts. The one in Chandrakona (West Midnapore) charges Rs 2 for an adult and Re 1 for a child. The fees at the parks in Midnapore town, Kalyani, Barrackpore and Purulia are Rs 5 for an adult and Re 1 for a child.

At Eden Gardens, a morning-walker has to pay Rs 2.

The forest department?s urban and recreational forestry division, which looks after Banabitan, has installed a music system on the green for morning-walkers and yoga enthusiasts.

?We have fitted sound-boxes to 84 electric posts. Classical instrumental music is played every morning to inspire people to perform yoga and other exercises,? said Somnath Mukherjee, deputy conservator of forests.

?So, naturally, we plan to realise a certain amount of money that we spend for maintaining the park,? he added.

Officials claim they require more than Rs 2 lakh every month for maintenance.

Interestingly, the footfall at Eden Gardens has gone up several times since November, when the fee was introduced. ?In November, 27,060 persons had visited the park. In December, the figure shot up to 46,326,? said Mukherjee. December 25 had registered a record footfall: 16,4464.