Ambulances, schoolbuses crawl as DA protest blocks city’s heart

Kolkata: Ambulances, school buses and other vehicles crawled as a section of state govt employees took to the streets and blocked the heart of the city on Thursday, demanding due dearness allowance (DA). The rally, organised under the banner of Sangrami Joutha Mancha, aimed to reach CM Mamata Banerjee's house at Kalighat but cops stopped the protesters at Esplanade, where they squatted on the road for over a couple of hours.Traffic went haywire around Esplanade, including S N Banerjee Road, Chowringhee Road and Dufferin Road, which were barricaded by the police. Even infants were stuck in ambulances for over an hour on their way back home from hospitals.
A month old Bidhan Maity, who came for a check-up of his congenital heart issue at Medical College Hospital, was stranded on S N Banerjee Road while going back to his home at Panchla with his parents. The infant's father, Amal Maity, rued: "It's been over an hour since our ambulance is stuck and we don't know when we will reach home. We came to Medical College Hospital in the morning and queued up for his check-up. We did not know that such an ordeal was in store for us while returning home. Stuck for long, my baby got exhausted weeping."Another child, Azikin Khan, aged a month and a half, from Keshpur in West Midnapore, underwent stomach surgery at NRS Medical College and was not spared the pain either. "The road ahead was closed with guard rails and the ambulance driver tried for passage but to no avail. Doctors advised us to protect the child from exhaustion, but moving out of the hospital, the traffic snarls caused inconvenience to him," said the child's father, Yasin Khan.Many commuters who were to catch long-distance trains were left in the lurch as they walked with baggage and trolley bags and looked for transport to reach the railway station. Beliaghata residents Amit Kundu and his wife Rupali, heading to Howrah to catch a train for Jamshedpur, were stuck at Moulali crossing. "After waiting in the cab for an hour, we got down and marched till Gostho Pal Sarani near Eden Gardens and took a yellow taxi to reach the station," said Kundu.Traffic cops stated that the problem began as early as noon and continued well past 5 pm as the twin protests by Left- and BJP-backed unions led to the collapse of traffic. "The protesters moved out after 4 pm and it took 45 minutes just to get vehicles to move; the effect was felt for another 1 hour," said an officer.The cops stated that around 1,000-odd DA protesters squatted between Dorina crossing and Lenin Sarani. Sometime later, the student protesters blocked College Street. With school traffic at its highest between 1 pm and 3 pm, even Exide crossing got slower, with cops finding both east-west (Howrah–Sealdah) and north-south cut off except the Bowbazar–BB Ganguly Street–Dalhousie link."We usually divert via Moulali but failed to do so on Thursday as even AJC Bose Road choked. S N Banerjee vehicles had to be diverted via GC Avenue. But the biggest setback was the protesters stopping vehicles at Lenin Sarani crossing, which cut off CR Avenue from JL Nehru Road," said another traffic cop.(Inputs from Antoreep Das & Biplab Bhattacharjee)