HYDERABAD: Utter chaos prevailed on the roads abutting the Hussainsagar lake on Monday with motorists getting stranded for hours together in bumper to bumper traffic as perhaps for the first time, the centralised Ganesh idol immersion procession dragged on well into the afternoon.Despite the best efforts of the police to complete Ganesh Nimajjan by the break of dawn, it concluded only around 3 p.m. with the immersion of the huge Khairatabad Ganesh. Part of the problem stemmed from the delay in getting the procession started from the Old City. It forced several other small processions from other parts of the city to wait till the wee hours. It all had a cascading effect on the arrangements. The traffic restrictions imposed on Sunday near the Tank Bund had to be extended till the end of the Nimajjan process which led to absolute chaos on the roads. The traffic on the NTR Ghat was closed completely forcing motorists to take to other routes. The worst-hit routes were Himayatnagar, Liberty, Narayanguda, Basheerbagh, Saifabad, Khairatabad, RP Road, MG Road and Patny. The important Tank Bund road, which connects Secunderabad to Hyderabad, was also closed and the narrow roads were literally choc-a-block.“It took an hour for me to reach Khairatabad even after taking other routes. I was late for my office even though I started early,’’ said P Mallikarjuna Rao, a private employee who commutes daily from Hyderguda to Khairatabad.Police opened the NTR Ghat road for traffic but it did not ease the traffic congestion. Vehicles carrying idols were allowed to enter the NTR Ghat road. The traffic from Khairatabad, however, was diverted towards Mint Compound. “The police were just diverting traffic. But the narrow routes got congested with buses and four-wheelers. It took almost one-and-a-half hours for me to reach Ramgopalpet from Khairatabad,’’ fumed another commuter. “The huge 20-seater vehicles and hundreds of lorries and vans, which are generally not allowed to enter the city during morning hours added to the woes,’’ said a traffic constable. Idols from the west and east zones were the last to be immersed and with heavy vehicles travelling on the arterial roads, lanes and bylanes, traffic was badly hit in areas as far as Chaderghat, Sultan Bazar and Asif Nagar. The police blamed the delayed start and increased number of idols to the spill over of the immersion process to Monday.
Comments
0 comment