JAMMU: The mere start of wedding season on Monday evening and traffic cops nowhere in sight lead to several kilometers long traffic jam on Jammu-Akhnoor road stretch that couldn’t be cleared till 1:00 AM on Tuesday. Long queues of vehicles were witnessed as spots including Barnai, Muthi, Muthi Camp, Paloura, Toph pull near Best Price, K.K Resort, Rajpura, Shakti Nagar, etc were completely gridlocked with adrenaline level of commuters shooting to alarming heights.
In the absence of Men in Blue and traffic moving at snail’s pace several marriages were reported delayed and many people desirous of travelling to other states missed their trains thus adding to their miseries. However, a small group of volunteers who were trying to manage traffic failed in their pursuit as the volume of vehicles was gigantic as compared to meager space available for navigating cars, buses, matadors, two wheelers, and even tongas which constitutes the long serpentine tails on ever busy Jammu-Akhnoor road. STATE TIMES contacted Police Control Room to seek assistance but to no avail as the cop on duty shunned his responsibility by stating that traffic police department has already been informed. Even attempts by STATE TIMES to contact SSP Traffic Uday Bhaskar Billa did not bear fruits as the cop incharge of City’s traffic never bothered to pick the phone. The road stretch which otherwise is covered in 5 to 10 minutes took hours to travel with parallel bye-lanes also getting chocked with unruly commuters entering into smaller streets in a bid to escape the mismanagement of cops and myopic vision of planners of Jammu City.