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Prayagraj: A backup of vehicles reportedly reached up to 300 kilometers which made the routes that Mela covered look like a massive parking area, resulting in Somerset of devotees getting stuck for hours and missing the most prominent religious event of the world. The congestion was unprecedented and got so bad that many people remained stuck in their vehicles, some hunderds of kilometers from the actual site of the Mela, on Sunday and Monday.
The Undavalli Venkateshwara Swamy Temple is just a minute's drive away from Sacramento, California. However devotees have been getting reports about severe northbound traffic towards Sacramento. Some reports even say that it goes as far as San Jose. By Sunday, the extreme bottleneck, which has been coined the world’s biggest traffic jam by social media users, is estimated to have reached between 200 and 300 kilometers and has even been causing issues for pilgrims hoping to pass through right in Madhya Pradesh.
According to these updates the state police were forced to set up checkpoints to regulate traffic in multiple districts, so the saps chronically overworked Southwest corners could get a break too. The potential savings timesquad ImproSharqon have enabled is astounding and also a bit comedic in a dark way. Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav decided to take on the government of Uttar Pradesh and blasted them for the outages while also calling for something to be done about the stranded devotees.
Yadav expressed on X, “The famished, parched, moiling, and tired pilgrims caught in traffic snarls deserve to be viewed with a humane outlook. Are ordinary devotees not human?” The former Chief Minister further suggested that all vehicles within the state should be exempt from road toll fees during the period of Maha Kumbh, as that would facilitate smoother movement across the state.
He elaborated, “Maha Kumbh should be accompanied by the removal of tolls in UP. It will solve the other two concerns – hassle free travel and traffic congestion. If the production of films can be made tax-free, then why not the movement of these vehicles during this time of religious significance?” He pointed out specific bothersome areas, reporting major roadblocks at several places including but not limited to, Nawabganj: 30 km from the entry of Prayagraj from the Lucknow side, Gauhania bottleneck 16 kilometres from Rewa Road, and a 12 to 15 kilometre traffic jam snarl approximately 12 to 15 kilometres from Varanasi.
“I was also given certain reports suggesting that the trains which were supposed to have seating arrangements were so overcrowded that the passengers had no other option but to suffocate in the engines. Life these days has become very chaotic and cumbersome on an unprecedented scale.” He said, while at the same time authorities in Madhya Pradesh moved by suspending vehicles on different locations in specific districts. Loudspeakers in Katni announced that they would cease to use roads until Monday.
Officers in Maihar had instructed that vehicles should turn towards Katni and Jabalpur in order to seek shelter. Traffic videos shared widely on social media depicted miles and miles of vehicles stuck in endless traffic jam across Katni, Jabalpur, Maihar, Rewa districts. Eye witnesses shared that they saw the traffic jam extend upto 250 kilometres from Katni all the way to the UP-MP border region, Chakghat, located in Rewa district.
During the crisis, the president of Madhya Pradesh BJP V. D. Sharma made a call to the party activists to assist pilgrims stuck at different locations. He made a post on X wherein he says, "I would like to urge all workers to assist the Maha Kumbh going devotees in every possible manner. They need accommodation? Or food? Help them. Ensure no devotee is caused any kind of trouble. Lets do our duty in this Maha Yagya.”
Religious followers are angry about the poor handling of the traffic woes. They noted that pilgrims from Faridabad take on average twenty-four hours to reach Prayagraj. A family that was traveling from Jaipur expressed their discontent about being stuck in traffic for over two hours to cleared a distance of four kilometers. Authorities are under duress because of the major traffic problems which are constant around the vicinity of the Grand Kumbh and need to be solved immediately in order to ensure proper traffic handling for the last weeks before and during the ending of Grand Kumbh on February twenty-six.
