Hyderabad: Cops face leaders’ wrath for traffic jams

Hyderabad: If angry ministers and MLAs who were caught in the virtual gridlock for several hours on the roads leading to Hitec City on Friday evening were endlessly calling up top police officers and wondering what went wrong with the traffic and the roads in just one downpour, some of the top bureaucrats were left fuming and could not do much except venting their anger at their subordinates, particularly the traffic police officials.

Like quite a few bureaucrats including IAS, IPS and income-tax officials, who were on their way to the attend the marriage of the son of income-tax commissioner, Chennai, C. Srinivas Reddy, the state police chief was caught in the gridlock for close to three hours and reached the venue very late.

“At least two ministers and three MLAs were caught in the gridlock. Some of them spent two hours while the vehicle of other VIPs just could not move for almost three hours. Some got so angry that they wanted to walk to their destinations but the roads had turned into rivers and there was no choice but to remain seated in their SUVs,” police officials who were manning the traffic at different places in Jubilee Hills, Madhapur and Hitec City, told Deccan Chronicle.

Close to a dozen bureaucrats from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were caught in the gridlock and they helplessly looked for ways to get out of the mess, but could not succeed.

So much communication was taking place between policemen, right from the constable to the top brass and from the security personnel of the VIPs to the policemen on the roads, that the wireless communication over VHF sets was at its peak. That was not of much help as the traffic situation went haywire by evening and it was like everybody had just given up.

At one point, Mr Mahendar Reddy, who previously worked as Hyderabad police commissioner and state Intelligence chief, got down at an intersection between Jubilee Hills and Madhapur and started monitoring traffic. When contacted by this newspaper, Mr Reddy chose not to comment when asked to share his experience of getting caught in one of the worst gridlocks Hyderabad had witnessed and how he began monitoring the traffic. It is learnt that not only Mr Mahendar Reddy, but the police commissioners of Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Rachakonda were flooded with calls and Whatsapp messages from ministers, MLAs and the common public.

“It was the season’s first downpour and all drains were overflowing which led to waterlogging across the roads in all areas. This led to the gridlock. There is so much of construction activity around that water got stagnated at different places and vehicles were getting piled up. The municipal officials are to be blamed for this,” a senior police official, requesting anonymity said.

It is reliably learnt that a furious Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and his son K.T. Rama Rao, who had promised to make Hyderabad a global city, took to task senior police and GHMC officials for their failure to take the required steps to prevent the gridlock. “Both were receiving continuous complaints from their MLAs,” a source said. As for the public, they took to Twitter to vent their ire at the government.