Atmosphere everywhere in the capital is filled with religious mysticism but the divine feeling is often interrupted by cacophonous sounds of vehicles stranded on roads which lay encroached in some localities further narrowing the lanes or blocked due to pandals being constructed right in the middle of the road. The stage might be set for Goddess Durga but for police it is too early to think about diverting routes for smooth traffic.
Be it the Boreya Road passing through Morhabadi or Bakri Bazaar in Upper Bazaar — travelling is an unbearable pain and agony sometimes leading to altercation among the people stranded who blame each other for causing traffic jam.
“There is no one to control traffic on this road so people move at will. People park their vehicles on the street and the under-construction pandal has encroached half of the road. Nobody is opposing celebration but there must be something to regulate traffic,” said Sanjay Jain, a resident of Morhabadi.
Puja organising committees of Ranchi have requested district administration to appoint police personnel to ensure smooth flow of traffic but they are still waiting for uniform clad constables to keep road free of congestion. Interestingly, committees passed the buck on administration but fell short of explanations on failure on their part to appoint volunteers for keeping road free of jam.
“We have requested the administration to provide us constables but I don’t see that happening until the pandals are opened for public. We are also concerned with traffic jam but we are short of manpower to do these things on our own. Besides this is the job police to look after not us,” maintained member of Geetanjali Club at Morhabadi.
With structures almost complete everywhere, now the focus has shifted to the decoration part which involves creating bamboo structures in the around a pandal. But jaw dropping decoration of entire area comes at cost.
Heart of the city-- Shahid Chowk—Seva Sadan are some of the areas where police presence is almost negligible for orderly traffic. For police it appears that deployment is only for the purpose of controlling mob and not vehicles that move at will and cause traffic to come to a standstill until common sense prevails.
“We will see the exact reason for traffic congestion and if there will be a need to deploy constable we will definitely do so. But it is also for the people to understand that their on-road behavior is also responsible for causing traffic jam,” Traffic DSP R Chaudhary said.