This is the traffic you can encounter at the 5th Main-Mangammanapalya Main Road junction at 7pm. Strangely, this junction is manned by the cops from Electronic City. “We have to come 10 kilometres away from our station to manage the traffic here,” complained one cop.
When we checked with HSR traffic police on that day, we were informed that they were sent 10 kilometres away to Freedom Park for some traffic bandobast. Clearly, the jurisdiction of cops can be anywhere but where they should be. No wonder, you hardly find a few cops in HSR Layout. Will the higher ups ensure that the cops given to one station are used optimally for the area they are to manage? No wonder, there is so much chaos in HSR Layout when the cops are doing duty elsewhere.
And when residents do see them on the streets, they are busy collecting fines when they should be removing footpath encroachments, fixing broken dividers and streamlining traffic movement at busy junctions.
BORDER AREAS OF HSR LAYOUT
Indeed, this was not the scenario only on this day. The border areas of HSR Layout are regularly managed by traffic cops from Electronic City. We are talking about the Somasundrapalya Main Road junction and 5th Main junction of HSR Layout.
The problem is shortage of staff. The remedy? They hop from one junction to the other to ease the traffic flow during peak hours. We spotted them at the 5th Main-MG Palya junction between 6.30pm-8.30pm.
When we pressed them to also look at the jam at the MG Palya-HSR Layout junction, the cops said that they are short of staff, and they would rather tackle the bigger bottlenecks of Somasundrapalya Main Road and 5th Main junction near Salarpuria apartments. In addition, they said that the narrow stretch of road that meets MG Palya Road is the biggest problem. “Even a single four wheeler cannot take a U-turn here without obstructing traffic for a long time. The problem is with the curvature and width of the road itself,” said one cop manning the 5th Main junction.
The biggest complaint from the cops is that the users are always in a hurry and don’t listen to them on many occasions. “The tanker drivers are the biggest culprits. Many people keep dying regularly because of such persons. They drive fast even on roads that demand slow-moving traffic.”
JURISDICTIONAL CHAOS
While all the sectors of HSR Layout are managed by the crime branch of HSR Layout in a clear-cut fashion, the traffic police, however, had a stranger problem earlier. Sectors 6 & 7 were managed by the Madiwala cops. Later, it was streamlined to include all the sectors of HSR Layout. Similarly, the Bandepalya Police Station is in Sector 3 of HSR Layout, as they did not find a convenient place in their own jurisdiction, or so they claim. Similarly, the entire stretch of MG Palya Road, from Somasundrapalya Road junction to Hosur Road junction is managed by the Electronic City traffic cops, while Iblur is managed by the HSR cops.
