Rallies and puja pandals choke streets above

Kolkata: With Metro trouble on the Blue line, commuters who decided to take the road above also faced severe slow traffic in central Kolkata due to multiple rallies choking the roads in the area.Lalbazar said that RR Avenue was shut for close to five hours. The Dorina Crossing was shut for two hours post-noon. This meant cops had to divert vehicles from SN Banerjee Road, JL Nehru Road, and CR Avenue. The cascading effect spread to APC Road and Creek Row. While Dorina was reopened after 2.30 pm, traffic was not normalised until 5 pm on RR Avenue.Several pandals blocked space on key arterial roads which forced cops to divert vehicles from Ganesh Chandra Avenue and even CIT Road as alternatives to APC Road and SN Banerjee Road. "With schools getting over when Metro services got hit, traffic movement only got slower," said an East traffic guard sergeant.Koushik Roy got stuck for two hours while coming to his Dalhousie Square office from Dum Dum Park. "The metro I was travelling in stopped at Girish Park station. There was an announcement that commuters would have to deboard, as the train could not function because of a technical glitch. As I came out of the Metro station, many passengers were already waiting for buses that were overcrowded. I managed to squeeze myself onto a bus, but it was stuck in traffic around MG Road because of a rally. I reached my workplace after 2 pm," said Roy.Maximum traffic snarls were seen in the Esplanade area as thousands of teachers hit the streets from Raja Subodh Mallick Square to Rani Rashmoni Road in protest against the TET mandate. When the head was at RR Avenue, its tail was at Wellington. BJP supporters took out another rally from College Square to Dorina Crossing via SN Banerjee Road.Many commuters heading to Howrah station got stuck on buses for long and missed their trains. Sayantani Basak, a college student off Bypass from Chinsurah, said, "I was stranded at SN Banerjee Road for over an hour. As a result, I reached home much later after missing trains."Salt Lake resident Rupanita Sanyal got stranded in an app cab for about an hour on her way to New Market. "As I reached Sealdah, I got caught in traffic snarls. The driver told me there were rallies ahead. After waiting for an hour, I got down from the cab and started walking towards Esplanade, which was painstaking for me," she rued.