Following a rally by a portion of state government employees demanding the release of their overdue dearness allowance (DA) from the government, traffic movement was hampered in some areas of central Kolkata on Wednesday afternoon.
Before proceeding to the state Assembly, the demonstrators had gathered in the Metro channel close to Esplanade from various locations.
Following the rally by a portion of government employees and their retired counterparts, buses, cars, two-wheelers, and smaller cargo vehicles crept for more than an hour along areas of College Street, BB Ganguly Street, Chittaranjan Avenue, SN Banerjee Road, and Mayo Road.
After the line of stranded vehicles extended past Lindsay Street on Jawaharlal Nehru Road, some of the vehicles travelling from Park Street to the Esplanade had to be detoured via Mayo Road. When the demonstrators congregated on Rani Rashmoni Avenue and the Dorina crossing, drivers of cars and buses travelling from Sealdah to the Esplanade were instructed to go down AJC Bose Road.
Vehicles had to be rerouted starting at 2:30 p.m. after some protesters began to assemble in College Square. For a while, traffic on Eden Hospital Road from Chittaranjan Avenue and College Street from BB Ganguly Street had to be stopped, according to a senior officer of the Kolkata police.
Vehicles travelling along Chittaranjan Avenue toward the Esplanade had to be detoured via Ganesh Chandra Avenue and BB Ganguly Street.
The passage of cars towards Girish Park and Park Street along Chittaranjan Avenue from Esplanade virtually stopped for an hour as the protesters continued to congregate there before making their way along Rani Rashmoni Avenue to their ultimate objective, the state Assembly.
On SN Banerjee Road, a line of buses, vehicles, and minibuses continued extending. Senior Lalbazar police officers had to give orders to their subordinates on certain areas of AJC Bose Road to begin diverting traffic to Park Street.
All traffic from AJC Bose Road was detoured down Mayo Road in the direction of Esplanade Row East because rows of automobiles were stopped close to the Park Street flyover. The passage of buses and cars down Esplanade Row East suffered at 4pm as the police battled to keep the demonstrators on RR Avenue under control.
The police claimed that because it wasn’t peak traffic time, Red Road’s vehicle movement wasn’t hindered.
Late that night, the police said that 44 protestors had been detained for assembling near the state Assembly in violation of Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
During the altercation with the demonstrators on RR Avenue, four police officers, including a senior officer, were hurt, according to the policemen.
After the demonstrators left Rani Rashmoni Avenue at 6:30 p.m., traffic slowly started to circulate along all the major thoroughfares.