This has become an annual affair as every year the rehearsals fall on a weekday, hampering routine business
The capital was in lockdown as the city was choked by traffic snarls, following the Republic Day dress rehearsal carried out during the first half of the day. Interestingly, the biggest snarls was seen during non-peak hours – between 11:30 am and 4:30 pm.
This has become an annual affair as every year the rehearsals fall on a weekday, hampering routine business.
Not just traffic, even the government's normal functioning came to a halt for a while. The Prime Minister's Office in South Block, along with the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of External Affairs, ministries of home and finance and other important offices in Lutyens' Delhi shut down.
Some commuters gave vent to their frustration. "I was stuck on the road for almost half an hour for a five-minute-ride from Greater Kailash to Nehru Place. Why can't they bring a change in this age-old practice of holding rehearsals on weekdays and not on a Sunday preceding the event?" said Chinmay Kapoor, 46, a businessman from GK-1.
Rajan Awasthi, a marketing professional, who lives in Mayur Vihar, said that he was stuck on the Mathura Road for almost an hour while on his way to Okhla.
"It is normally just a 20-25 minute ride but I was stuck for over an hour. It was a bumper-to-bumper jam and a truck on the wrong side broke down. It held up even slow-moving traffic. However, with no traffic cops on the way, there was nobody to tow it away," said Awasthi, 32.
Major routes such as IGI Airport to Dhaula Kuan, airport to Gurgaon, Mathura Road (the only corridor linking North-South), Kalindi Kunj and Sarita Vihar, outer ring road from Nehru Place, Lajpat Nagar to Ashram Chowk, Aurobindo Marg on Mehrauli-Badarpur road, ITO, Akshardham and parts of ISBT Kashmere Gate, Daryaganj in north Delhi and Vikas Marg in east Delhi also reported long traffic snarls.
According to senior officers, traffic arrangements had been made this year to not let Mathura Road get piled up.
"There were traffic personnel on major corridors. We had kept a patch around Purana Qila area open to let traffic move through Mathura Road. Several stretches did have congestion but traffic arrangements had been made with alternate routes for south and central Delhi, so that regular business was not affected," said a senior traffic officer.
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