As NH-9 blockade continues, traffic police announce diversion, ask commuters to avoid highway

Ghaziabad: In the wake of blockade of one side of the National Highway-9 on Thursday, the Ghaziabad traffic police have advised commuters to avoid the highway and

Ghaziabad: In the wake of blockade of one side of the National Highway-9 on Thursday, the Ghaziabad traffic police have advised commuters to avoid the highway and also come up with diversions.

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Several groups of farmers protesting at the UP Gate on Thursday morning blocked the Ghaziabad-Delhi carriageway of the highway and it is likely to continue further, police officials said.

In its advisory, the traffic police have stated that vehicles coming from Chijrasi, Vijay Nagar, Khoda, among others, will be diverted to routes in Noida while commuters from Indirapuram, Vaishali and Vasundhara, etc, should take the Kaushambi-Anand Vihar border to reach Delhi.

The police also said that traffic coming from Moradabad and Hapur will be diverted through the Dasna flyover and then towards Raj Nagar Extension in order to move to Bhopra border near Delhi.

“The traffic diversions will be in place till the farmers are at the protest site on the highway. So, diversions have been announced to avoid inconvenience to commuters on Friday,” said Ramanand Kushwaha, superintendent of police (traffic).

“It was after talks with them, we got opened one lane of the blocked part of the highway. But the farmers again started opposing despite giving assurance for opening. Still, we acted with restraint,” said Ajay Shankar Pandey, district magistrate.

With diversions already in place since Thursday morning, there was huge traffic flow at Kaushambi border with Anand Vihar.

“The inner lanes of Kaushambi were packed to capacity with vehicles which were diverted to Delhi through the EDM Mall road. On Thursday evening, the main border road was again jam-packed and vehicles started coming on inside lanes of Kaushambi. In such a situation, we will face issues in coming days,” said VK Mittal, president of Kushambi Apartments RWA.

Many commuters were left stranded on NH-9 as the blockade was sudden and the police could not get clues to it.

“Commuters were left stranded on NH-9 near UP Gate as the highway was suddenly blocked. Thereafter, all the vehicles had to return back and take other roads in Indirapuram to move to Delhi. The Delhi-Ghaziabad side of the highway was running smooth on Thursday evening, but we will avoid the highway altogether on Friday,” said Kuldeep Saxena, a commuter and resident of Indirapuram.

The number of protesters below the UP Gate flyover has swelled considerably and dozens of tractor-trolleys also came in from western UP areas like Bulandshahr with farmers to support the protest led by the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU).

Apart from the BKU, farmers from Uttarakhand and Punjab have also come in and are staging protest at the blocked section of the highway, the officials said.