Thousands of people descended at Lalbagh to relish the I-Day flower show on Wednesday. But what they took home was a bitter experience of the nightmarish traffic jam.

With over four lakh people visiting the famous Lalbagh gardens, there were chock-a-block at Lal bagh main road, Double road, Lal bagh Fort road and the entire stretch of road surrounding the garden for hours together.

Neither were the traffic signal functioning nor was there any traffic police to control the vehicular movement, resulting in a total jam.

To add to this was heavy movement of pedestrians on all sides. Even they had a nightmarish experience as hundreds of two wheelers and four wheelers were parked at every available place, throwing all parking rules to the winds. As a cascading effect, traffic movement on Hosur road, the road leading to Jayanagar South End Circle, J C road were also affected.

Wednesday being a holiday as part of I-Day, people from far and wide had come to witness the flower show. As it was also the last day of the eight-day flower show, visitors started pouring in right from the morning.

Lalbagh authorities failed to issue tickets to all, and by the afternoon, opened all the four gates for free entrance.
The entire Lalbagh was crowded. Then officials were forced to shut all the gates at 5 pm, though they were supposed to allow people inside the garden till 7 pm. The affected citizens squarely blamed the traffic police.

Nagesh, a motorist who had come with his family, said that he wouldn’t have dared to come to Lal bagh had he got any inkling of the traffic mess up.

“It is really surprising why police failed to anticipate the problem and take pre-cautionary measures,” he added.
Wilson Garden police traffic inspector Syed Afsar Pasha, however, defended saying that due to a large number of people visiting Lal bagh, traffic movement was slow.

According to Deputy Director of Lalbagh Gardens, Jagadish, never in the past had so many people come to witness the Independence-Day flower show in so many numbers.