On Monday, in another attempt by traffic police and Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) officials, a drive to remove encroachment along the Mahatma Gandhi Marcg (Main Road) was conducted.
These attempts have been made in the past as well to make one of the busiest arteries jam free. Yet neither the civic body nor the traffic police personnel have been successful in their attempts to fix this glitch till date. None of the concerned authorities has yet figured out any concrete measures to tackle the situation.
Traffic snarl, congestion, overcrowded lanes including small shop situated along the most prominent and busiest MG Marg is one of the most common scenarios here at Capital City and vital reason for traffic jam. Despite, the orders released by Jharkhand High Court (HC) order in April 2016 to shift all the street vendors along the busy avenues of MG Marg at the six designated places around the peripherals of Main Road no serious attempts till date has been taken up on serious ground.
“We can only try to make the Main Road jam free but cannot change the mindset of vendors overnight. After HC decision on rehabilitation of street vendors, continuous drive is being carried out at a regular gap to relocate them but unfortunately so far none of them are ready to leave the place,” said, Traffic SP, Sanjay Ranjan Singh.
Notably, the civic body had allotted six destinations after the Jharkhand HC order to resettle all hawkers. However, most street vendors fears to lose their fair share of business, if they resettle at the allotted sites. New marketing complex at Jaipal Singh Stadium is yet to come up and at least two years time is required for its complete construction. All the six temporary vending zones at Jaipal Singh Stadium, Zila School premises, Harmu Ground etc remain deserted even during the festivals. After the HC call on resettling the street hawkers, a three-week deadline for the authorities to remove vendors along the important roads of Main Road was issued. “We have drafted out one proposal to settle down this muddle as vendors are not ready to leave MG Road. We have urged to the State government to provide some six ft. lane from Kutchery Road to Albert Ekka Chowk for hawkers.
Besides, both traffic police department and RMC have human resource crunch, so it is simply impossible to conduct regular drive to remove encroachment,” added, Deputy Mayor, Sanjiv Vijayawargia.