The rally faithful are back at the city centre, with a bandh around the corner setting the stage for a long season of protests and processions leading up to the Assembly elections next year.

There were three rallies on Monday, one in support of Wednesday’s shutdown, one against and another to protest the confusion over the date of the teacher eligibility test (TET). Led by Trinamul Congress MLA Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, a Trinamul trade union rally began from SN Banerjee Road with around 1,000-odd supporters. They blocked the Dorina crossing around 1.30pm before marching along the Metro Channel and Lenin Sarani till Wellington. “We urge transport operators, office-goers and shop owners to come out of their homes on September 2 and work just like on any other day,” Chattopadhyay said. A few hours later, CPM trade union supporters, led by former transport minister Shyamal Chakraborty, held a meeting at Y-Road before marching along the Metro Channel to reach Wellington. Their appeal? Make the bandh a success. The BJP’s youth wing too had planned a march till Esplanade, only to alter their programme because not too many people had assembled. At College Square, they blocked College Street for around 15 minutes, accusing the government of negligence leading to a bagful of TET papers being lost.

As Lalbazar braces for more applications from parties planning to lay siege to the city centre, Metro draws up a handy guide to the rally hotspots of Calcutta.

METRO CHANNEL:

Where: A 200-metre stretch of the north-bound flank of JL Nehru Road, opposite Metro cinema.

Claim to infamy: Has hosted the maximum number of rallies over the past two decades, causing commuters the maximum harassment.

Why the name? Contrary to what many people think, the landmark Metro cinema didn’t lend its name to Calcutta’s channel of protest.

Senior traffic police officers traced the origin of the name to the period when a stretch of JL Nehru Road (previously Chowringhee Road) had been dug up for the Metro rail project that would later become the city’s transport lifeline. “When Metro rail construction began in 1978, the stretch from Lindsay Street to Lenin Sarani was dug up and closed to traffic,” recalled an officer who has been with the traffic department for nearly 25 years.

The Metro service from Esplanade started in 1984 but the dug-up road overhead wasn’t levelled until 1992. During this period, a part of the road in front of Lenin Park was filled with sand and gravel and some taxis and Matadors would be parked in that thin strip or channel.

Since 1989, a minibus for the Esplanade-Salkia route started to operate from this channel. It is around this time that police officers started referring to the stretch as the Metro Channel, linking its creation with the Metro project.

During this period, Esplanade East, the stretch between Raj Bhavan’s west gate and Lenin Sarani, used to be the epicentre of the city’s rallies. But all rallies shifted to the Metro Channel after the high court banned such congregations on Esplanade East Road on February 16, 1997.

Until May last year, there was officially nothing called the Metro Channel, although the police’s coinage had long gained currency because of newspaper reports.

On May 18, 2014, the road was officially christened as the Metro Channel after an outpost of Hare Street Police station was renamed Metro Channel Control Post.

Largest rally: In December 2006, when Mamata Banerjee sat on a 25-day hunger strike demanding return of land acquired from unwilling farmers in Singur.

Disruption quotient: Maximum. A Metro Channel rally blocks north to south movement, throwing traffic haywire. No matter how much the police try to divert traffic through Rani Rashmoni Road, Old Court House Street and Esplanade East Road, the detour takes around half an hour, against the few seconds it generally takes to reach CR Avenue from the JL Nehru Road-SN Banerjee Road crossing.

Current status: On May 25, 2013, after an all-party meeting in Lalbazar, police commissioner Surajit Kar Purkayastha had told reporters that all political parties had agreed to not organise any meeting at the Metro Channel because “it causes a lot of public harassment”. Since then, there has officially been no rally there.

Earlier, in 2013, the high court had asked all political parties to spell out their stand on banning rallies in the central business district, based on a petition by Subhas Datta in January 2011. Only three parties submitted their opinions — the PDS agreed to the proposed ban while the BJP and SUCI opposed it. The ruling Trinamul wasn’t even represented by its lawyer at the hearings.

Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose, who had been hearing the case, has since been transferred to the Supreme Court.

RR AVENUE:

Where: The road leading to the Eden Gardens and Akashvani Bhavan from the Dorina crossing.

Claim to infamy: Only smaller meetings and rallies used to be held on RR Avenue until Metro Channel rallies were banned a couple of years ago. Rallies with huge turnouts now congregate on RR Avenue.

Why the name? After Rani Rashmoni. A bust of Rashmoni overlooks the rally hotspot from inside Curzon Park.
Largest rally: According to a police officer, sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. “It was a huge gathering and the participants had turned violent. The police resorted to firing and a SUCI supporter named Madhai Haldar died,” the officer recalled.

Disruption quotient: The police try to keep at least one-third of the road open so that vehicles can pass single file. But when a gathering is large, all flanks are closed and that cripples traffic in and around Esplanade.
Current status: Most meetings and rallies are held there. Since the ban on Metro Channel rallies, RR Avenue is the city’s road to protest.

Lalbazar recently turned a strip of RR Avenue into concrete to put up one of its new shields against marauding mobs — the Aluminium Alloy Wall.

Each of these walls is 1.8 metre high, slightly more than the height of the average adult. The height allows it to be used as a cover for cops. During a law-violation programme, political parties try to push or pull down the barricades and go beyond the zone where the police ask them to stop. “Since the surface was uneven, the aluminium walls could be placed properly. Hence it was necessary to smoothen the platform,” an officer said.

But the concrete base didn’t help when Left supporters attacked policemen with bricks last Thursday and the walls toppled one after the other, forcing the cops to run for cover.

Y-ROAD:

Where: A link road off the Dorina crossing that connects to Esplanade East. It is narrower than the roads surrounding it.

Claim to infamy: Once RR Avenue became the most-sought-after protest site, smaller rallies with 200 to 300 people were relegated to Y-Road.

Why the name? It is Y-shaped. Coming from Esplanade East, its two arms branch out in that shape into RR Avenue and the Dorina crossing.

Largest rally: Only small rallies are allowed here.

Disruption quotient: Police officers say Y-Road plays a role in easing traffic flow when the surrounding thoroughfares are clogged or rallies pass through JL Nehru Road or RR Avenue.

Text by Tamaghna Banerjee and Subhajoy Roy