KCR convoy jams 'smart city' traffic

Hyderabad: Overzealous attitude of the traffic police on Tuesday led to people being forced to wait in the middle of the road for about 20 minutes under heavy downpour. Reason: Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's convoy had to leave the Assembly.

Since the Chief Minister gets a sort of green channel, five minutes before the convoy starts from the starting point, the traffic is stopped at different places. In this case, the traffic was stopped at Khairtabad, Punjagutta and Lakdikapul junctions as KCR was to go to Pragati Bhavan.

The worst affected were the people on two wheelers, including women and children. This had a cascading effect and the traffic jam lasted for nearly 45 minutes or so.

Soon after the Assembly adjourned for the day at around 4.25 pm, the traffic police stopped all the vehicles around the Assembly premises and all through the way towards the CM's camp office. This was the time when these areas were witnessing heavy downpour and those on two wheelers had no choice but wait under the heavy rain. Even those who had raincoats found it difficult due to continuous downpour. Women who were returning to their homes from the offices and girl students from educational institutions bore the brunt.

V Nagamani, a private employee at Khairtabad and who was on her way to her house in Kukatpally, said that they have to face such a situation very often. There should be some system where there would be no problem for the common man during the VIP movements, she said.

Once the CM convoy passed through these junctions, the traffic police had to struggle hard to clear the traffic. It took more than one hour to bring the vehicular traffic back to normal.

When asked, was there any mechanism to inform the CM or the police higher officials about the weather conditions and see that there was minimum inconvenience to the people, a policeman on duty said that they have simply follow the instructions of the senior officials.

There is no system where a policeman on duty can inform the CM security about the weather conditions and the traffic situation on road. If they get instructions to stop the traffic, they need to stop and there was nothing else they can do, he added.KCR convoy jams 'smart city' traffic