Hyderabad: Traffic gridlock in city for CM’s swearing-in ceremony

Hyderabad : Delegates and leaders from various States faced a tough time in reaching the Lal Bahadur Stadium in Nampally to witness the oath-taking ceremony of Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy as traffic came to a standstill due to massive inflow of public and party activists to the venue.

Expecting a huge footfall of public and party leaders, city police had re-directed the traffic movement to other arterial roads but faced difficulties in managing the vehicular flow during the ceremony on Thursday.

With Revanth Reddy appealing to all the party workers to attend the event, several thousands of people thronged to witness the ceremony. In view of such a large turnout of people and vehicles, traffic police faced a tough time managing the traffic.

Massive traffic gridlock was at L B Stadium and surrounding areas like Nampally, M J Market Road, Abids, Lakdikapul, Koti, Narayanguda, Himayatnagar, Banjara Hills, Masab Tank, Mehdipatnam, Somajiguda, Punjagutta and even Khairtabad which left motorists exasperated.

The VVIP and VIP convoys zoomed to the venue from the international airport and some others from a private hotel in Gachibowli, the surrounding areas like Madhapur, Kondapur, Raidurg, and as well as the Nehru ORR sides also witnessed a slow-moving traffic. Delegates and political leaders from various other states had to face the brunt of the city traffic while on their way to L B Stadium for the ceremony.

Ironically, due to traffic pile-up on the road, the State Governor’s Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan convoy along with several VVIPs was stuck in traffic. Also, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah convoy, which was heading to L B Stadium, got stuck and police made a way for the convoy. Several VIPs, MLAs and other delegates had to walk to reach the L B Stadium.

The slow-moving traffic continued till about 6 pm in these areas. The situation worsened after the ceremony ended. After the programme, the traffic police allowed the VVIPs and VIPs to move to their destinations and the attendees of the programme were forced to stop for more than half an hour.

However, several party leaders who failed to reach the venue on time, were forced to witness the ceremony on giant screens installed outside the stadium.

The additional police personnel were deployed to clear the vehicles parked haphazardly on the roads and traffic flow was ensured before completion of the swearing-in programme.

Moreover, the motorists were stuck at one place for several minutes as they could not do anything. Slow traffic movement witnessed from 10 am for a long duration in areas surrounding L B Stadium, Nampally, M J Market Road, Abids, Lakdikapul, Koti, Narayanguda, Himayatnagar, and other areas.

At several places’ ambulances were seen stuck in the traffic grid and the drivers, except blaring the emergency sirens could not do anything. In fact, the TSRTC buses were diverted on other alternative narrow roads. Though the police, anticipating the traffic snarl well in advance, had informed the public about the snarls, motorists were taken aback to find some of the arterial roads of the city blocked.

As part of the bandobast, the traffic police had issued a traffic advisory to the public informing about traffic slow down and jams around the L B Stadium.