Kolkata: Kolkata Police has begun holding multiple parleys with multiple south Kolkata Durga Puja organisers, with the focus firmly now on ensuring that pedestrian and vehicular movement remains as normal as possible. Cops have also directed organisers to ensure that no shopper is inconvenienced due to the construction of pandals.The traffic dept on Thursday has provided the all important green signal to multiple pujas in and around RB Avenue, including the one near Triangular Park, after multiple visits to each of them left them “satisfied”.Kolkata Traffic Police said that among those “advised’ on ground included big ones located in the Lake and Deshapriya Park area. They were asked to ensure a larger exit (around 16 feet in width) and ensure they leave “enough space” for vehicular movement respectively, said cops, the initial requests made almost a month back.At Ballygunge Cultural, for example, the organisers have raised the height of the pandal platform from 8 feet to 12 feet to allow pedestrians to walk underneath. Around 16 feet of road space has been kept open for two vehicles to pass beside the pandal,” said Anjan Ukil, one of the chief organizers.Cops said that another pandal coming up near Triangular Park was warned to leave space for vehicles. “It has been done as per our bidding,” said an officer. Significantly, police have asked all organisers to ensure that they do not block the barricaded space earmarked for reveller movements with advertisements that can impede or block smooth movement of pedestrians. Not occupying space on the blacktop is also another important criterion to get police permissions, reminded cops.Cops have prima facie decided to adopt a formula that will allow 7-10 minutes for vehicle movement and 2-4 minutes for pedestrian crossover. The crowd will be channelised using barricades to prevent any spill over on arterial roads. However, in doing so, there is a possibility pedestrian traffic might surge exponentially at these crossings during the wait period.“Even if we open all pedestrian channels all at once, completely stopping vehicles, some crowding can’t be avoided. Hence, we will work clearly on the ground situation. For this, we are identifying specific metro station gates for entering and coming out of the metros,” said an officer.While the area around Bachan’s Dhaba will be used to circulate crowd moving towards Chetla Agrani and Alipore Sarbojonin and the Lake Market gate will be used by revellers to reach the metro platform (as was the practice earlier), the police this year will divert vehicles – especially buses – headed for Tollygunge Circular Road and Durgapur Bridge via Hazra and Alipore Road towards the Jai Hind Setu.“The Ahindra Mancha crossing in Chetla and the Tara Road and Mysore Road crossings on Rashbehari Avenue are likely to witness huge crossovers. ACPs and OCs will be individually positioned to take care of these pedestrians,” said an officer who attended the meeting.Officially, the parking lots are expected to be located, yet again, far away from the big budget pandals too. While the Badamtala Asar Sangha and 66 Pally will see parking on SP Mukherjee Road, those headed towards Chetla Agrani and Suruchi Sangha will get limited parking at Gobinda Auddy Road. A few parking spaces might be carved out on the Alipore Road too.An additional control post-cum-watch tower will come up at the Rashbehari Avenue crossing, making it the nerve centre of pujas. This will be in addition to the reserve control rooms that will come up at Jadavpur, Tollygunge and Behala. “Maximum cops outside Lalbazar will be in this area. Most senior officers will also be deputed between Deshapriya Park and Chetla Agarani,” said a senior officer.This is why the police have also requested metro not to allow two trains to enter platforms at the same time to rule out any possibility of a stampede at the Kalighat metro station. The police said they are putting special importance to Kalighat metro station which caters to over 40 % of puja revellers moving either towards Deshapriya Park or Chetla Agrani. The cops have also held consultation with metro to keep seven of the nine gates open and pedestrian crossover methods were discussed.
