Traffic takes a hit as heart of city goes through another workday rally blockage
Times of India | 23 April 2025
123 Kolkata: Traffic was hit in a major portion of central Kolkata on Tuesday afternoon following several rallies that were organised in the heart of the city — a couple of them linked to the SSC protest and two others on the Murshidabad violence. However, with not one procession blocking Esplanade, cops could continue with the flow of traffic through some minor diversions.
Cops said that since the protesters staggered their approach at the extremely busy crossing at the Esplanade area, vehicles on SN Banerjee Road, Lenin Sarani, and a portion of J L Nehru Road along with Ganesh Chandra Avenue were the worst hit. "Given the proposed Brigade gathering to protest the Waqf Bill on April 26 — when Eden Gardens will also host a T20 match — we treated Tuesday as a warm-up and experimented with some signal timing changes," said an officer.
"We witnessed slow movement for a small period of time across BB Ganguly Street, CR Avenue, Old Court House Street, SN Banerjee Road, JL Nehru Road, and Lenin Sarani. What started around 2 pm, normalised only around 5 pm," said an officer.
"I was stuck on S N Banerjee Road for around 20 minutes before the police managed to divert the vehicles. There was no major alert from police in this regard. I fail to understand why they were allowed to squat at such an important point," said Saptak Ganguly, who got stuck. Akinchan Roy took to the Kolkata Traffic Police Facebook page to state that he was stuck at the same place for over 15 minutes.
"Several school students suffered while returning home. We informed parents that the children were stuck in rally traffic and that they would be delayed. Students of some popular schools in south Kolkata who were returning home to the northern part of the city too were stuck in the rallies and reached home late," said an official of the city's pool car owners' welfare association. Shoppers trying to reach New Market and Burrabazar too had to spend hours in the jam. "We are now used to such delays," said Md Riyaz, a shopkeeper.