The audience that visited the Golden Beach Festival venue at Chandipur on the culmination evening on Sunday had a harrowing experience as it encountered an unprecedented traffic jam on the road connecting the programme site owing to the mismanagement by the police and local volunteers.
For more than three hours the road was completely jammed; even the pedestrians were trapped and could hardly move, let alone vehicles.
Most of the visitors while blamed the police administration, a few enraged had bitter altercations with the policemen on duty.
Sibananda Roy, a guest of the evening, expressing severe displeasure over the traffic on stage during his address to the gathering blamed the police administration for the chaos.
The congestion occurred as there were unchecked movements of vehicles from either end of the road, which connects the Chandipur beach with Balramgadi, a prominent fishing base of the district.
The road width while is about 20 feet, the movement of bikes, four wheelers and vehicles connected to fishing base along with the turnout of huge visitors and local residents resulted in the traffic mess.
The traffic system while witnessed a breakdown by 6 pm it could be restored after 9 pm. Despite this major failure, the show on the culmination evening went on.
Besides a cultural show and orchestra by a Bengal group, the other main attraction was cracker show.
Beach festival organizing committee secretary Bismay Mohanty said, “There were some problems in traffic management. However, the programme was good and everything went peacefully.”