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