Rally, Rakhi celebrations by KMC in Kolkata chokes traffic

KOLKATA: A range of things — broken tree branches, rakhi celebrations at major intersections by workers of ruling party, bad roads, damaged signals and a rally attended by the chief minister — choked the city traffic in many parts of central Kolkata witnessing major jams.

An average journey to Esplanade from north Kolkata took roughly an extra half-an-hour to even an hour. Those travelling from the south was luckier with journey time increasing between 15-25 minutes. The very fact that several had braved sporadic rains and come out to celebrate Rakhi also added to the volume of traffic on certain choked roads leading to various railway stations.

If the morning started with several blocked roads due to fallen trees, the Sanskriti Diwas celebrations by Trinamool Congress and the subsequent "Safe Drive, Save Life" campaign rally led by chief minister Mamata Banerjee has added to the woes of commuters between Esplanade and Maniktala with the Sealdah-Moulali stretch the worst hit.

Even the reliable radio cabs ran at surge rates — sometimes even 3.5 times the normal fares.

According to senior officers at Lalbazar, about 62 fallen trees had severely disturbed traffic on Wednesday. About 18 of them, from Garia to Dum Dum, could not be removed by the Disaster Management Group (DMG) overnight.

“Certain roads in areas like Behala and EM Bypass has huge craters leading to jams. But what really disturbed our daily routines was certain damaged signals on roads like Southern Avenue, AJC Bose Road and CR Avenue. We had to resort to manual signaling at the CR Avenue-MG Road as also the CIT Road-SN Banerjee-Lenin Sarani-AJC Bose Road crossing at Moulali for a long period of time,” said a senior official.

Sources admitted that temporary structures put up at important crossings to celebrate Rakhi by the ruling party reduced carriage space. The Trinamool though maintained that it chose such areas that could not have interfered with traffic.

But it was the CM’s march that left the city’s traffic completely haywire. Even as SN Banerjee Road and lenin Sarani was shut down, one flank of Sealdah flyover and vast stretches of Esplanade was made out of bounds. This led to vehicles being stuck on roads for hours between 1.30pm and 3.30pm.

Even the ambulances were not spared. Renuka Guha (79), a resident of Kharagpur underwent a major operation at a hospital located at Taltala. On her way home in an ambulance, it got stuck for around an hour on the SN Banerjee Road.
“I had no inkling that the road will be so bad today. If I knew this will be the situation on the day of Rakhi, I would have delayed the journey,” said one of her relatives.

A worried Sujata Mahtani wrote on the Kolkata traffic police Facebook page how schoolchildren in their schoolbuses were stuck on the CIT Road for two hours.

“People are going through a lot of harassment and that too on a festive day like Rakshabandhan. I definitely think things could've been planned better and how I wish the common people's concerns and pains are considered before organizing such a program involving all the heavyweights of the state! Don't read me wrong but it's a cry of a mother, of a sister, who's having to wait such long hours for their dear ones!” Mahtani said later.

Sonal R Shaw too vent her ire on the same page: “You people are seriously inhuman, raksha bandhan festival is being affected but you people cannot do a thing about it , seriously !” Kishan Shah, another commuter commented: “Could have done it on some other day ... Rakshabandhan is being affected.”