Bhopal: On the eve of auspicious ‘Akshay Tritiya’, citizens on Tuesday faced brunt of strict traffic action as police restricted entry of vehicles to usual places overnight, imposed fines on unsuspected violators and towed away wrongly parked vehicles marring their festive spirit.
The aggrieved violators hoped “Traffic police would be lenient during the festive season of marriage and auspicious beginning, considering the contradictions of scarcity of parking space and swelled up crowd of carnival shoppers.
The chaos was evident in almost all the established markets in the city. People, who rushed to New Market for last minute Akshay Tritiya shopping, faced problems with parking their two-wheelers as police had erected iron pipe barricades reducing the dedicated parking space in the market. Adding more to the woes, the traffic police made the road one-way just to create parking space rendering vehicular movement to almost standstill in the area.
For the last one week, incidents of heated exchange between traffic police and common citizens over parking and other traffic issues have become an order of the day. The hassled citizens asked: “Traffic police had repeatedly assured of opening multilevel parking in the area soon. While they have failed to keep their own words, why are they disturbing our happiness by showing so much strictness suddenly during the festival time?”
A festive reveller, P Rekha, whose two-wheeler was towed away from near SBI Bank boundary wall rued that “My scooty was just behind a chat-pakodi vendor, but traffic police towed it away.” She argued “Just show me where the parking space is? And, what’s wrong if I park my scooty at an empty place without creating obstruction to anyone. When there is so much of scarcity of space, traffic police should be lenient and that too, at least during festival times. If someone parks in the middle of the road, it is indeed wrong but when the road itself was made one-way only for parking and still it does not have sufficient space, where will we go?”
However, despite all her arguments, Rekha had to pay fine and visit police station to walk away freely. Similarly, many others had to follow suit to get back their towed away vehicles which indeed were not a cherishing experience. Meanwhile, according to TT Nagar (traffic), the multilevel parking will be dedicated to public soon. “It is true that there is a severe lack of parking space in the city, but traffic police is helpless as they have to do their duty before everything,” the department said.