By IANS,
Kolkata : One person was killed as traffic went haywire in Kolkata Monday with a series of Trinamool Congress processions passing through the main thoroughfares and converging at the city hub where party chief Mamata Banerjee addressed a huge rally.
There were day-long traffic jams, particularly in the northern and central part of the city, with vehicles queuing up on the roads for hours causing much inconvenience to the public.
“This is the first working day of the week and now these rallies… most streets in the office areas of central and north Kolkata, including the S.N. Banerjee Road linking Howrah with the city, remained closed till evening. Traffic at the Strand Road and Central Avenues were diverted. This is nothing but public harassment,” said a 42-year software engineer Sayantan Roy.
Public buses were overcrowded and even the normally comfortable Metro Railway ride proved nightmarish with the trains packed to capacity as Trinamool activists from the districts went around various city hotspots before attending their leader’s rally.
Brinda Biswas, a housewife, said: “I was struck in a traffic jam for three hours and as a result my seven-year daughter had to wait alone outside her school for me after her classes were over.”
Said schoolteacher Ranjana Maitra: “Trinamool is claiming it is fighting for the welfare of the public. In reality it enjoys all the luxuries and propaganda at our expense. The India-US civil nuclear deal, so-called conflicts between the Left parties and Trinamool, as also their clash with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government are nothing but hoodwinking the public.”
The traffic police said 54-year-old Mohammad Rizwan was overrun by a private bus near Mahajati Sadan in central Kolkata amid traffic diversions and jams.
Over 40,000 people took part in eight big processions taken out from different parts of the city by Trinamool to observe Martyrs’ Day in memory of 13 Congress workers killed in police firing that day in 1993 .
Banerjee was then in Congress.