Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi’s visit toJalandhar threw the city traffic out of gear on Sunday and commuters werestranded for quite a long time at various chowks.
Most of the traffic officials were busy managing thesecurity of the chief minister while several roads were out of bounds forcommuters, leading to traffic jams.
Massive traffic jams were witnessed at Model Town, GTroad, Doaba Chowk, BSF Chowk and among other locations, while commuters wereleft to find their way through the bottlenecks as at several locations no alternativeroutes were planned to regulate the traffic.
Kavita Sachdeva, a resident of Punjabi Bagh, said she wastravelling towards model town around 2pm, but the traffic was halted near NickBakers and she was forced to wait for nearly 25 minutes. She said the policeshould have made a prior announcement about the change in route plan in thewake of the CM’s visit to the city.
Many of those stranded were sharing pictures on socialmedia and narrating their plight. “On one hand CM Channi announced to curtailhis security, while on the other hand his long convoy was giving a hard time toJalandhar residents who were stopped at various traffic diversions” said Pooja,a student.
Protests against Punjab CM
During his visit to Jalandhar today, the Punjab CMvisited all the three MLAs of the city where he had one to one interaction withMLAs and party workers, and said that his government has already expedited thepace of developmental works to facilitate the people of the city.
However, a group of ETT teachers and farmers at BMC chowkand Model town respectively, attempted to gherao the convoy of the ChiefMinister in order to show their disappointment against the Punjab govt andtheir policies.