Curbs irk tourists on RK beach road in Visakhapatnam

Visakhapatnam: Several tourists who stayed in hotels and guest houses in and around RK Beach area and the morning walkers at RK Beach, were left dejected upon police blocking the entire RK beach road stretch on Thursday to foil the AP youth’s silent protest and YSRC’s candle light rally demanding special category status (SCS) to Andhra Pradesh. The cops have imposed Section 144 of CrPC and closed the beach road stretch from Waltair to Coastal Battery for traffic and morning walkers from 6 am on Thursday. Not only tourists but also the residents on the beach road had faced a tough time to visit the nearby shops and others places as the police didn’t allow most of them, citing various reasons.

“We have planned to visit the beautiful places in and around Vizag on Thursday, but the police restrictions have dampened our plans. We didn’t get any taxi or cab on the beach road to travel and we were forced to postpone our plans on Friday,” says Manoranjan Panda, a tourist from Bhubaneswar of Odisha, who visited Vizag along with his family and stayed in a guest house on the beach road. The foreign tourists and domestic tourists were seen walking on the beach road with luggage to reach Waltair and other places to get a taxi to go either railway station or bus station. It was the senior citizens (tourists) who suffered most because they were unable to walk to the nearby places to get into the taxi.

“The heavy deployment of police and armed security personnel on the beach road has led to sealing the entire beach road and we have faced many troubles to go anywhere in the city and to return to the hotel,” says another tourist Niranjan Benarjee from West Bengal. Expressing displeasure over the police for not allowing walking on the beach road on Thursday, morning walkers on the beach road said inconvenience for walkers, residents and tourists was a failure on the part of government and police.

Nearly 1,000 police personnel have been deployed on the beach road and the cops have created a lot of inconvenience to residents at the beach. “Though I have produced identify proof card to go on my bike, the police didn’t allow me citing that beach road was closed for vehicles. After nearly 30 minutes of argument, they allowed my vehicle,” says K. Amarnath, a resident on the beach road. City police chief T. Yoganand said that they have imposed the restrictions on the beach road to prevent unlawful assembling and protests for peace and tranquility. “The restrictions might have caused some inconvenience to people but Vizagites could have understood the situation and support the police,” he added.