Bypass hits a dais block

Kolkata’s right to roads was snatched with impunity on Wednesday by a CPI(M)-backed organisation that captured EM Bypass for a meeting, cutting off commuters from one flank of a stretch between Ruby Hospital and Santoshpur throughout the day.

Police started diverting south-bound traffic near Kalikapur to the other flank from 11.30am instead of dismantling the dais in the middle of the road, triggering chaos that spilled over to several stretches of the Bypass and its feeder roads, from Garia to Gariahat.

The brazen disregard for rules — and the commuter’s rights — was later justified by sports minister Kanti Ganguly, the chief guest at the 2.30pm meeting organised by the No. 12 Borough Nagarik Committee to drum up support to “save” an 89-acre plot to the left of the dais from being taken over by realtors.

“What happens when a national highway is blocked for 21 days or when a hunger strike in the middle of the city goes on for days?” asked Ganguly, pre-empting the question on harried citizens’ lips and playing the Mamata-did-it-first-and-worse card.

He claimed that the Nagarik Committee had “no option” but to organise the meeting on the main road. “We couldn’t have erected the dais on the plot because of the court case over its ownership,” explained Ganguly.

With ICSE, ISC and CBSE examinations underway, students headed for the test centres or returning home on either side of noon were also caught in the mayhem. A Trinamool procession against “the CPI(M)’s attempt to wrest the plot” on the only flank that was open compounded the commuter’s woes.

Megha Bhaduri, returning from her sister’s wedding, took 55 minutes to reach her home in Survey Park from the Ruby roundabout in the afternoon. “On any other day, it takes hardly five minutes,” said the teenager, who lives in a highrise off the Bypass.

Vehicles coming from both sides crawled on one flank between Kalikapur and the Metro Cash and Carry outlet until 6.30pm because the dais and the chairs laid out on the road for the meeting hadn’t been removed till then. Several ambulances were stuck in the snarls. “There are three hospitals in the vicinity — Ruby, RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences and Peerless. How can anybody be allowed to block a thoroughfare for nearly eight hours? Is no law applicable to this city?” asked an angry resident of Hiland Park.

Officials of South 24-Parganas declined comment on the meeting. “Permission is given by the local police station and the subdivisional officer. I am not sure whether permission was sought for this meeting,” said L.N. Meena, the SP of South 24-Parganas.

District magistrate Khalil Ahmed was also mum on the matter, but a source in Jadavpur East police station claimed that the organisers had sought — and received — permission for the event.

So was permission granted in contravention of rules?

A traffic police officer said the local police station could have initiated a suo motu case under Section 151 of the IPC for obstructing traffic on a thoroughfare. “But it is a bailable offence,” he added.

The meeting, attended by the likes of former MP Sujan Chakraborty, film-makers Tarun Bandopadhyay and Anindita Sarbadhicary, and former footballers Prasun Banerjee and Surajit Sengupta, drew around 6,000 people but harassed many more.


Subhajoy Roy, The Telegraph Metro