CHENNAI: Traffic on Anna Salai in Chennai came to a standstill on Thursday when chief minister J
Jayalalithaa garlanded the statue of
Annadurai
on the arterial road on the occasion of the former chief minister’s birth anniversary.
Several commuters said they were caught unawares of the traffic situation. Many commuters got down from buses and walked to their workplaces.
"It took two hours for me to reach
Nandanam
from Central Station. By the time I reached Cathedral Road, I knew there was no point in continuing the journey in a bus," said S Vaidhyanathan. "I walked the rest of the distance," he added.
The Chennai Traffic Police had not informed the public about the traffic situation - both on their Twitter handle and on their Facebook page.
"It was a complete chaos. The traffic police did not look like they had any control over the traffic," said Vaidhyanathan.
Several parts of the city including Parry's Corner, Central, Teynampet, Saidapet and Nandanam were clogged with traffic. While calls to the traffic police's control room turned futile, information received from 103 were scant. "We are sending our personnel to clear the traffic as soon as possible," said the staff handling 103.
Commuters wanted to know why no information about this were made publicly available. "Why can't the cops tweet about such traffic clogs? This was a planned event. I would have saved so much time if I had known about it earlier," said P Sandiya, a resident of Saidapet.