Traffic superintendent of police P.K. Das on Wednesday cracked the whip on bus operators and stall owners at the chaotic Mithapur bus stand - the traffic junction allotted to him under the recent 'adoption' policy.
Private bus owners park their vehicles in the middle of the road leading to traffic snarls in the area every day. Das, with a group of traffic constables, went to the spot for a random inspection and took to task anybody responsible for the chaos and encroachment.
Few days ago, additional director-general (headquarters) S.K. Singhal had suggested senior officers in the force to 'adopt' important traffic junctions in the city to streamline traffic and make the zones free of encroachment. Singhal also volunteered to assist the force in the initiative and adopted the Rajbanshi Nagar Hanuman Mandir roundabout.
Patna senior superintendent of police Manu Maharaaj allotted 17 of the remaining 18 traffic junctions in the city to senior-rank officers and gave himself the responsibility of the Income Tax roundabout.
In traffic SP Das's kitty fell the Mithapur bus stand.
The locality is an education hub with campuses of five elite institutions located in a 1-km stretch. National Institute of Fashion Technology, Chanakya National Law University and Chandragupt Institute of Management, Patna, already operate from here while the Aryabhatta Knowledge University and the Patna centre of Indira Gandhi National Open University will come up.
But that same 1-km stretch is paralysed most days because of private bus owners parking their vehicles in front of the institutions.
Nearly 3,000 buses are parked at the Mithapur bus stand - from where the buses depart for destinations across the state - and all of them vie with each other to take passengers. This competition among the bus operators leads to the entire road being blocked with long queues on both sides.
Das reprimanded the drivers for parking the buses in the middle of the road to get passengers. Those who saw the SP from far tried to escape his wrath by moving their buses but they too got a piece of the SP's mind.
He also found small shops set up at the stand to wash the buses. A 1,000-gallon water tank had taken up a portion of the road and to make matters worse, buses were parked in front, waiting to be washed.
Das lost his cool yet again, and asked the stall-owners the reason to open shop violating traffic rules. The owner asked Das for two-three days to remove the 'wash shops' with folded hands but was rebuked.
'I want you to remove this shop within an hour or else be ready to go to jail,' he said. 'First you violate traffic rules by opening this bus-washing garage and second, you want me to give you time. I am warning you to remove it. It is because of people like you that this road is so messy and traffic crawls.'
Another problem on the road are that the ticket stalls are on the road instead of inside the bus stand.
'If every officer in Bihar police acts like this, the problem of chaotic traffic will not exist in Patna,' said Anurag Gupta, a motorist passing through the bus stand, happy with the steps taken to streamline traffic in Patna. 'The traffic SP must ensure that the stalls removed from the road do not return.'
Das told The Telegraph: 'The system will continue as long as I am serving the post of traffic SP. I have asked the traffic officers to regularly monitor the area apart from conduct night patrolling.'
