BHUBANESWAR: With thousands of devotees making a beeline to have a darshan of ‘Daru’ of Lord Sudarshan, the roads connecting the Capital City with Balakati witnessed unprecedented traffic on Tuesday.
Since early morning, the traffic from Sai Temple at Tankapani Road to Balakati moved at a snail’s pace. It was a Herculean task for the Commissionerate of Police to manage the huge flow of devotees.
All the roads leading to Gadakuntunia village, where the holy Neem tree is located, were choked with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Towards evening, the traffic came to a grinding halt at the junction leading to Sai Temple causing great inconvenience to commuters.
The traffic snarls extended all the way upto Tankapani Road. Confusion prevailed for hours as cars, auto-rickshaws and two-wheelers were stranded on the road.
Probably for the first time, managing traffic on a road leading to a nondescript village on the outskirts of the Capital City turned nightmarish for the Commissionerate of Police.
“Force deployment in the area was not sufficient to handle the crowd which witnessed an unexpected surge. Amidst constrained manpower, we have put forth our best efforts to ensure that the ‘Daru Darshan’ remains an incident-free affair,” Police Commissioner Dr RP Sharma said.
On the other hand, to avoid further congestion, barricades were installed at multiple locations. However, these efforts proved ineffective to manage the ever increasing crowd pouring in from all sides.