DELHI CHALO: Protest leaves commuters high & dry

Sanjay Bumbroo

Tribune News Service

Mohali, November 26

The ‘Delhi Chalo’ march of farmers caused problems to commuters due to day-long traffic jams on the Chandigarh-Ambala road and at the Zirakpur-Chandigarh border today.

Commuters had a tough time negotiating traffic snarls and diversions created as the entry points on the highway approaching Chandigarh were sealed for around 10 hours today. Due to the day-long snarl-ups, employees working in Chandigarh and coming from Punjab areas could not reach their offices on time.

The police had sealed the entry points of Zirakpur, Dera Bassi and Lalru where vehicles were seen stuck for miles till late in the evening.

The Mohali police had sealed the Zirakpur entry points at 9.30 am and the borders were not opened till the filling of this report. Vehicular movement on the Zirakpur flyover was not allowed.

To facilitate the movement of traffic, vehicles coming from the Ambala side were diverted at Dera Bassi towards Panchkula to reach Chandigarh. Similarly, the outgoing traffic from Airport Road at the Patiala crossing was diverted towards Zirakpur where it was further diverted towards Panchkula-Nada Sahib-Barwala road so as to enable commuters to take the Yamunanagar highway to reach Ambala and Delhi.

Commuters were stuck in the traffic jam for over an hour and a half.

Arshdeep Singh, a resident of Zirakpur, said he went from one road to another to reach Zirakpur from Chandigarh and reached his office in the city only in the afternoon. He said the protesters should think about people also as after a day-long work, they longed to reach their homes.

Jaswinder Kumar, a resident of Ambala Cantonment, said the scenario on the Panchkula side was worse. He said he had been waiting for 40 minutes for his turn to change the route to the other side of the highway to join the traffic moving towards a free road to reach Ambala. He said if he had prior knowledge about the diversion of routes, he would have gone directly to Panchkula from Mohali first and then moved to Ambala through Yamunanagar highway.

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