Thousands of commuters had a harrowing time for several hours on Tuesday at Somajiguda with traffic movement going for a toss as people thronged Chief Minister's camp office.
People from different communities began arriving at the camp office from Tuesday noon to thank him for the budgetary allocations made for them. Aware of the possible 'good' gathering of people, the traffic police were deployed in the vicinity of the camp office to ensure free flow of traffic.
But the anticipated 'good' gathering turned into 'massive' making it difficult for police to regulate the traffic. Vehicles began piling up till Paradise hotel at Begumpet and the ripple effect held up vehicles upto Banjara Hills on the other side.
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“We thought some 400 vans, buses or trucks would arrive. They crossed 2,000,” a traffic police officer said. People coming from different parts of the State began parking vehicles on roadside near ITC Kakatiya hotel. This point was already getting choked with pillars of Metro Rail elevated corridor coming up a few yards away.
Vehicles coming to CM camp office further clogged up the area. Begumpet fly-over being the trunk route, vehicles coming from western part of the city came to a standstill before the camp office streams of visitors began crossing the road from one end to the other. For some time, traffic police brought in cranes to pull out vehicles parked haphazardly.
As more number of vehicle began arriving, it became difficult even to move the vehicles laden with cranes. From 2 p.m., the flow of visitors steadily went up. After 4 p.m., it turned out to be even more difficult to regulate as vehicles caught in a gridlock situation.
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It was only after 8 p.m., traffic congestions slowly got cleared.