Traffic ban on city roads till April 14; essential service vehicles exempted

Aurangabad: Police, in order to ensure effective lockdown implementation, have now restricted the movement of all private vehicles and bicycles on city roads from April 1 to 14.
The prohibitory orders were issued by Aurangabad commissioner of police Chiranjeev Prasad on Monday evening under section 144 of the CrPC.
For the effective implementation of these orders, new checkposts have been set up on all the important roads of the city.
According to sources, the decision was taken after the earlier imposed restrictions failed to keep people indoors. Only vehicles associated essential services defined by the district administration, state and central governments have been exempted from this rule.
“We have been compelled to impose fresh set of restrictions after it came to fore that our repeated request to the citizens fell on deaf ears,” Prasad said
According to him, those flouting the new orders will not only be booked, but their vehicles will also be seized for the entire lockdown period. Different districts of Marathwada region have already imposed restrictions on movement of vehicles.
Jalna superintendent of police S Chaitanya said in the past three days they have already seized around 200 vehicles of which 180 are two-wheelers. “To keep a check on unwanted movement of vehicles, we have installed barricades at all the important crossroads and chowks in Jalna,” he said.
Beed police have also imposed similar restrictions and have asked petrol pumps to not sell fuel to private vehicles. “We have seized around 80 vehicles and the process of seizing more vehicles is under way,” superintendent of police Harssh Poddar said.
Latur as well as Osmanabad police have also seized hundreds of vehicles in the past couple of days for violating lockdown orders. Osmanabad superintendent of police Raj Tilak Roushan said police administration has decided to implement lockdown orders in letter and in spirit so that a check on the spread of Covid-19 can be brought.