Vehicles stand bumper to bumper on Park Street flyover and JL Nehru Road during Mamata Banerjee’s rally at Esplanade on Monday. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

A sea of supporters over double the size of last year’s Martrys’ Day rally brought joy to Mamata Banerjee on Monday and sorrow to the city for five-and-a-half hours.

“We can sniff victory in the air,” state Trinamul president Subrata Bakshi said, alluding to the mood in the party after the panchayat and municipal polls.

But police and commuters could only sniff trouble as the crowd swelled every minute and took over almost every road in and around Esplanade. Traffic congestion increased when Metro Rail services were disrupted for over 30 minutes because of a suicide at Rabinda Sarobar station.

At 2.30pm, when the sea of faces extended from Park Street flyover to Dufferin Road and Dacres Lane to Subodh Mullick Square, Mamata invited breakaway Congress leader Somen Mitra to address the gathering. As he spoke, supporters at the far end could barely hear a word.

When Mamata started speaking, supporters stood atop buses parked on Dufferin Road and Mayo Road to hear her. Women squatting on the tram tracks on Lenin Sarani craned their necks but could only catch snatches of what she was saying.

Esplanade returned to normal around 6.30pm, by which time everyone who was somewhere in central Calcutta or headed there had had a taste of the chaos on the streets.

Mohammad Rizwan, a 40-year-old pedestrian, died when a bus carrying Trinamul supporters knocked him down near Mahajati Sadan.

That was around 12.50pm, around the same time when a section of Trinamul workers turned violent on Brabourne Road. They damaged two mini buses, a CSTC bus and a private one because the vehicles had tried to speed past the procession.

In the commotion, Trinamul supporter Chandan Tiwari fell from a crowded truck and hurt himself.

He was taken to SSKM Hospital and discharged after first-aid. Another rallyist, Nazrul Mollah, had an epilepsy attack and was taken to the same hospital and administered an injection. He was later referred to Sambhunath Pandit Hospital.

The Park Street flyover was chock-a-block with people by 1pm. Not a vehicle moved along SN Banerjee Road and BB Ganguly Street was too narrow to take the load of south-bound traffic from Central Avenue. Strand Road and AJC Bose Road were choked, too.

Buses and Matadors that brought people to the venue were parked on New Road, Mayo Road, Dufferin Road and Jawaharlal Nehru Road.

“The Esplanade crossing, where the rally was held, was not the right venue for such a huge crowd and the result was obvious,” said Vineet Goyel, the deputy commissioner of police (headquarters). “But after the rally was over, the crowd dispersed very fast and traffic returned to normal soon.”

Not only the police, even the Trinamul leadership had probably not expected the rally to attract as many as 1.5 lakh people.

A jubilant Bakshi said: “The political environment is different now. Our supporters are a buoyant lot, unlike last year when some of them were a bit uncertain about our political fortunes.”