Ranchi: Marriages may be made in heaven, but wedding season snarls are definitely raising hell in the capital.

Haphazard parking, unwarranted honking and extreme pollution near marriage halls, from morning till late night, are leaving commuters hassled while the RMC and traffic police are looking the other way.

A case in point is the stretch between Karamtoli and Tagore Hill, a distance of 2km that hosts around half a dozen marriage halls.

Last Friday, Morabadi resident Rahul Kumar, who was rushing his elderly father to hospital with respiratory distress, was stranded near Chandigarh Bhavan, a wedding address, for 40 minutes.

"On any other day, it would have taken us 10 minutes to reach Medica hospital from home, but that day it took us two hours owing to the jam caused by unruly parking of vehicles by wedding guests," Kumar said wondering how the administration gave permission to host a wedding at a place with inadequate parking.

Opposite Chandigarh Bhavan on the 10-metre narrow Tagore Hill Road is another hall called Parinay, which is equally to blame for snarls.

"Marriage halls have mushroomed in this area in the past two years without proper parking space. Two days ago, baraatis were bursting crackers on the road at midnight causing noise and air pollution, besides a bottleneck," said Suman Singh, a banker and local resident.

Residents of Kokar are equally under stress because the area hosts at least five marriage and banquet halls within a 1.5km radius.

"Ranchi is perhaps the only capital city where one can construct marriage/banquet halls anywhere and even without basic facilities," ridiculed a Kokar resident.

RMC city manager Swati said over 80 marriage and banquet halls were currently registered with the corporation, but conceded that there were many unregistered ones too.

"Having proper parking space is one of the criteria for granting permits. While banquet halls should be able to accommodate at least 20 vehicles, marriage halls are expected to have more space (20-plus vehicles). There are many other clauses such as CCTV cameras and firefighting arrangements," she said.

Swati added that it was the job of traffic police and the owner of marriage/banquet hall concerned to ensure roads remained free during events.

Traffic DSP Radha Prem Kishore maintained that they had directed every hall to inform the local police station about events in advance, on daily or weekly basis, so that proper deployment could be made.

"But, few care to inform us and absence of cops in adequate numbers leads to snarls. We plan to launch a crackdown soon," he said.