Hyderabad: With the Telangana Assembly elections less than a week away and all political parties fielding their top leadership in the state to try their luck, people in Hyderabad have been at the receiving at end with longer traffic jams caused by political rallies and road shows
While the chaos was spread across three city commissionerates in the city, the worst hit were the commuters on the Sardar Patel Road passing by the Begumpet Old Airport. With the increased movement of VVIPS at the airport, regular traffic is obstructed, putting the commuters in trouble.
During the past few days, people in Secunderabad, Uppal, Amberpet, Jubilee Hills, Old City among others have struggled with traffic problems.
“The situation in already narrow and choked roads in areas like Borabanda, Yousufguda is even worse and people are forced to take a complete detour,” said Arokia Swamy of Borabanda.
“There are cops everywhere, but all on election duty and to protect the politicians, but nobody is bothered about the common people,” he added.
George D.S. from Amberpet said, “It was about 9.15 am in the morning and I was already getting late to work that day. To top it all, the roads in Amberpet are really bad, thanks to the flyover construction. The BJP roadshow took place on that very same narrow road, causing a 40-minute long traffic.”
“We had no option but to wait there in the sun, because the road towards Golnaka was blocked due to construction, the diversion at Moosarambagh was blocked by the roadshow and the only U-turn was jam packed by vehicles on all sides. Just two days earlier, the Congress roadshow caused similar traffic with women supporters refusing to make way.”
Echoing a similar concern, P Harika Muthyala, studying in a private college in Begumpet, said every alternate day traffic on Begumpet roads are packed. "It worsens around evening on our way home. Some of my friends said goodbye to their vehicles and resorted to taking the metro every day until the first week of December. Roads at Rasoolpura, Prakashnagar too are just as bad," she said.
Rajesh Kumar Jaiswal of Uppal said that police personnel were deployed near the Begumpet airport, but they were clueless about when the VVIP will leave the place and traffic movement allowed.
Police, particularly the traffic personnel do not seem to have a plan to address this issue. “We are doing our best to ensure there is minimum inconvenience. But till the elections are over, there is no option,” they said, adding that they are continuously circulating alerts on slow traffic movement on social media platforms.
