Mumbai: Chaos everywhere as citizens get back to work after a long break

The long queue outside the MHADA office on Tuesday. Pic/Aishwarya Deodhar

After a five-day long holiday, Mumbai that never sleeps faced traffic jams on the first working day, on Tuesday. Vehicles lined up for hours on traffic clogged roads. To add to this, there were huge crowds and queues outside public service facilities/ authorities like banks, the Mantralaya, courts, and MHADA.

Last week, there was a public holiday on Thursday for Anant Chaturdashi, the last day of Ganesh immersion and on Monday, for Gandhi Jayanti. Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had announced on Wednesday evening that there would be a holiday on Friday for Eid. This gave a five-day holiday to almost all establishments both public and private.

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Roads crowded

On Tuesday, the roads were crowded in the morning after this long break. "I had to go to Fort and Kala Ghoda and the crowd was crazy somewhere around 2 pm near the court. It was difficult to walk through. I tried taking a cab all the way to my last destination but it was impossible because of the overcrowding," said Anushree Chaurasia, a student at Sophia college. "I was stuck for around an hour. There was also a crowd around Fountain, I presume it was for the court, or if not that then the bank," she added.

Ritesh Khedekar, who works at the Mumbai International Airport said, "It generally takes an hour from Borivli to reach the airport via Western Express Highway from 10 am to 11 am. Today it took me almost two and half hours resulting in a late mark." "I travel from Bandra station to BKC regularly. There is traffic chaos at the station every day but on Tuesday it was at another level. No traffic police personnel was present and share autos packed the road on both sides. Besides station road there was traffic in small gullies," said Vinod Almeida, a commuter.

"Every day I travel from Ghatkopar to Parel. This takes 45 minutes to 50 minutes during peak hours. But today it took more than one and half hours as there was a huge traffic jam on the Eastern Express Highway. There was traffic from the Amar Mahal Junction, Chembur to Suman Nagar even after 11 AM," said Sunny Kadam, a resident of Ghatkopar.

1 km queue outside MHADA

There is always a queue outside the MHADA office in Bandra. But on Tuesday, the queue stretched up to 1 km. "There are two reasons. We started collecting documents from mill workers after getting 1.5 lakh forms for homes. Even people for regular work waited outside. This was the result of the long holiday. Now we have arranged another venue nearby to collect the documents to ease the queue," said an official from the Public Relations Department of MHADA.

Even the Mantralaya experienced a large crowd on Tuesday as people had been waiting for five days. The roads heading to Mantralaya were also busier compared to other days due to the large number of vehicles.

Inputs from Prajakta Kasale, Sameer Surve, Eshan Kalyanikar and Prasun Choudhari