Traffic crawled in many parts of Kolkata on Tuesday, with some areas witnessing congestion that lasted for hours, amid an increase in the number of private vehicles on roads owing to ICSE and CBSE exams.
While congestion caused delays of up to 20 minutes during peak office hours on Diamond Harbour Road, traffic on Judges Court Road nearly came to a standstill at around 10.30am, commuters told My Kolkata.
The number of private cars nearly tripled on Kolkata roads owing to exams, an official from Kolkata Traffic Control said.
“The situation was particularly bad in areas that have schools. We have deployed additional traffic guards, and civic volunteers on congested roads,” he said, adding that the situation improved significantly after 2pm.
Tushar Talukdar, an IT professional living in Behala, was stuck in a major congestion near Lakshmipat Singhania Academy in Alipore for nearly 20 minutes.
“It took me 20 minutes to travel 500 metres on Judges Court Road. Parked cars of parents, who had come to exam centres with their children occupied half of the road,” Talukdar said.
Dhakuria resident Sutapa Halder, like many others, was late to work because of the crawling traffic.
“Binodini High School is right next to my house. There was nobody to manage traffic on the lane and vehicles caused a frustrating line that took forever to clear up,” Halder said.
While over 40,000 students appeared for the ICSE exams in Kolkata on Tuesday, nearly 25,000 wrote papers for CBSE in the city.
ICSE and CBSE examinations began on Tuesday (February 17) across India. While ICSE exams will end on March 30, CBSE (Class X) will conclude on March 11, and Class XII on April 10.