Amritsar admn remains true to its promise, razes controversial Bhai Lalo Chowk

The district administration remained true to its promise and dismantled the controversial Bhai Lalo traffic intersection barely days after the local MLA and his acolytes were at the forefront of constructing it.

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The juncture had given rise to a plethora of problems, the most prominent of them being massive traffic snarls. Residents were irked at its construction. They had even questioned the politician’s motive of getting it constructed “just to gain a handful of votes.”

The Tribune had highlighted the haphazard manner in which the structure had come up leading to serpentine lines of vehicles poling up. This included school buses.

Insiders say senior administration officers had told the MLA that the structure had to be dismantled as it was creating more problems than it could solve. The politician was nowhere to be seen today when the intersection was being brought down. A senior officer said alternative arrangements were being made for the movement of traffic. The juncture had defeated the very purpose of the railway underpass, located nearby, which remained clogged with traffic.

Deputy Commissioner (DC) Uma Shankar Gupta said the administration had nothing against the MLA. “However, when the juncture was completed, the city saw massive traffic snarls. This led to discontentment among locals and shopkeepers,” he said.

This development would give respite to thousands of commuters, including hundreds of schoolchildren, who inadvertently got trapped in traffic snarls.

The intersection had come up despite the PWD authorities claiming that “it needed to be redesigned”.

For the last so many days, the city has been drowned in angry voices of residents who claimed that they had never seen such lengthy traffic jams in the past several decades. Old-timers say they fail to comprehend what prompted the MLA to “unlawfully” build the intersection.

The structure, where four roads converge, was built in the name of Bhai Lalo, a Sikh religious figure. One of the roads leads to the bus-stand through the railway underpass, while others head towards different places in the city.

The railway underpass was built with an eye to decongest the traffic. However, things are back to square one with the underpass remaining chock-a-block with traffic. The chowk was proving to be more of a bane than a boon for commuters.

On the very day the juncture was built, administration officials had vehemently claimed that it would be brought down. Officials had followed the proper legal procedure before taking a final decision to dismantle it.

Harjinder Singh, Additional Deputy Commissioner (ADC-General), said he held several rounds of talks with followers of Bhai Lalo. The ADC-General claimed that he told the followers that their sentiments would be kept in mind when an alternative to the traffic intersection would be constructed by the administration.