Farmers Movement Archive

Commuters face traffic snarls as farmers block Delhi to Ghaziabad side of DME for 12 hours during Bharat bandh call

Ghaziabad: Thousands of commuters were stuck in traffic snarls at Uttar Pradesh borders on Friday as protesting farmers blocked the Delhi to Ghaziabad carriageway of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway (DME) for 12 hours during their Bharat bandh call. Traffic officials said the carriageway was opened around 6pm on Friday after which normal traffic was restored.Thousands of farmers have been protesting at UP Gate since November 28, 2020 to press for their demand of repeal of the three central farm laws and a new law on minimum support price (MSP). The commuters on DME on Friday used the Anand Vihar-Kaushambi border and also the Hindon canal road to move to Delhi. “There were massive traffic jams and snarls during peak hours as the farmers closed down the operational carriageway of the DME. I initially drove to Kaushambi but there was a massive jam there as well. So I returned to the canal road to reach my office,” said Kuldeep Saxena, a resident of Indirapuram.“In the evening, there were snarls but the expressway was operational around 6.45pm when I returned to Ghaziabad from Delhi,” he added. The residents of Kaushambi have raised concerns at the growing traffic issues since the blockade of the DME last year.“As a result of the occupation of the DME, thousands of vehicles pass through our locality and it has disturbed the lives of our residents. There is so much traffic on our internal roads that even senior citizens find it difficult to cross to the other side. It is time the authorities intervene and get the issue sorted out. There is daily peak hour chaos in Kaushambi,” said VK Mittal, president of Kaushambi apartments’ residents’ welfare association. Farmers staged a 12-hour long sit-in during which they played drums and celebrated Holi at the expressway. They blocked the operational carriageway, and in the afternoon they threatened to block the road indefinitely demanding the release of Yudhvir Singh, the national general secretary of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), by the Gujarat police.A video was circulated by the BKU over social media in which Singh was seen holding a press conference in Gujarat when he was taken away by the police. “He was holding a press conference in Ahmedabad, Gujarat when the police arrived and took him away. Thereafter at UP Gate, we decided that the carriageway will be blocked indefinitely till he is released. However, by evening, the police in Ahmedabad released him and at UP Gate we released the expressway around 6pm,” said Dharmendra Malik, BKU’s media in-charge. Police officials of the Chandkheda police station in Ahmedabad could not be contacted despite repeated attempts on the numbers provided by the Ahmedabad city control room. The farmers during the bandh call on Friday also tried to block traffic on the Delhi-Meerut Road. “They held a symbolic protest and later handed a memorandum of their demands. The traffic was not stuck at Duhai and the protestors left after submitting the memorandum. The DME carriageway was also restored in the evening by the protesters at UP Gate,” said Ajay Shankar Pandey, district magistrate, Ghaziabad.Ramanand Kushwaha, superintendent of police (traffic), Ghaziabad, said that normal vehicular movement was restored at the expressway by 6pm on Friday and that the usual diversions will continue. The Ghaziabad-Delhi carriageway has been blocked by the farmers as they have been camping there since December 3 last year. As a result, thousands of commuters continue to move through Kaushambi and the Hindon canal road to go to Delhi.

Hindustan Times

26-03-2021

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