Haridwar district administration looks lackadaisical as far as the arrangements for Mahashivratri festival and Kanwar Mela are concerned. Inadequate police visibility is spawning anxiety with the number of Kanwars in the city rising every day.
Notably, three days ago, a meeting was held in traffic lines presided over by District Magistrate (DM) and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Haridwar. As per the briefings, over 500 police personnel of different ranks are engaged at different locations to control the flow of Kanwars in the city.
However, things are dismal on the ground with people here hardly seeing any police personnel to keep eyes on the developing things. Only iron hurdles are seen here and there on the road with ‘STOP’ written on them. But such hurdles are evoking no compliance with those for whom these are meant.
Sanjay Yadav, an employee of a nationalised bank, said that he catches a tempo from Shantikunj at 9 daily to reach office at laltaro Pol. It takes around twenty minutes. However, since the Kanwar Mela has started he is leaving home much earlier in view of the roads getting congested.
Suresh Singh Rawat, a guard posted in a bank on Upper Road, echoed the same, saying he has to leave for office earlier lest he gets late getting stuck on the roads.
Rajat Singh, resident of Bhupatwala and employee of a private company in SIIDCUl area, recounted his bad experience. He said he had been marked ‘half — day’ on the attendance register as he reached office one and a half hour late because of the same reason. “Traffic crawls in view of the Kanwars getting right on the roads with the law-enforcers doing nothing to unsnarl the congestion,” he said, annoyed with the state of things.
A newspaper hawker Manoj Kumar told a story of the Kanwars ruling the roost on the roads with the police conniving with their ‘pranks’ from behind. “While distributing papers in the morning near Har ki Pauri, when my cycle slightly touched one of the Kanwarwalas over a dozen of them literally pounced on me and abused me. I somehow managed to pacify them by pleading for forgiveness. With police remaining invisible, we are left to such predicament presently,” he said.
NH- 58 and 72 are bearing the maximum brunt of things. Normally, over twenty thousand vehicles ply on these roads. The traffic is crawling now-a –days with no one left to direct the Kanwars that they are meant to proceed along the left side of the roads. With things in topsy-turvy, they are coming right on the roads to the woe of the commuters. “It seems that police and administration are waiting for a mishap or two to emerge out of their studied somnolence,” said one of the annoyed commuters.