Traffic in the State capital went haywire on Monday due to the restrictions imposed by the police in wake of President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit. In view of security threat to the President, the authorities had imposed ‘ Zero Traffic’ on the entire eight kilometer long route which the President took from Raj Bhawan to state assembly, but it proved painful for those who happened to be on the city roads during that period.
This correspondent witnessed several instances of the harassment inflicted by the authorities in connection with the VVIP visit. One woman was seen pleading with the policemen at Defence colony barricade to let her go as one of her relative in Nehru colony had died and she had to visit his house urgently. The police team posted at the place politely asked her to take another route but surprisingly they were not in position to tell her an alternative route.
The authorities had plugged all the arterial routes which connected the roads like EC road and Rajpur road on which the convoy of the President passed. The traffic to the busy Rishikesh Haridwar from Inter State Bus Terminus (ISBT) was worst affected as the people were forced to take a long detour. At some places many people were seen arguing with the policemen to let them go while at other places they simply waited for authorities to open the road.
R N Joshi a resident of Defence Colony said that it is wrong on part of authorities to enforce such a blanket ban on movement on such important roads of the city. “The President should have used a chopper to land at some place near Vidhan Sabha to avoid such painful experience to the common people”, he said.
The authorities had forced closure of entire market near State assembly for the entire day. Sunil Sharma a tea vendor, whose shop was also closed for the day that it is hard for a poor person like him to keep the shop closed for the entire day. R P Godiyal who owns a carpenter shop in front of Vidhan Sabha however said that losing a day’s business is not good but since the issue is related with security of President everyone should cooperate. Interestingly the footpaths which were nowhere to be seen due to encroachments of vehicles, vendors and shopkeepers on the busy Rajpur and EC roads were suddenly visible on Monday due to the extra care taken by the police to give an impression of clean Doon to the visiting first citizen of the Nation.