look news india
Preparations are at their peak for the famous Kartik Purnima ‘Garh Ganga Fair’ held in the historical pilgrimage cities of Garhmukteshwar and Brajghat located in Hapur district of Uttar Pradesh. Every year lakhs of devotees come to this Mahakumbh of faith and devotion to take a dip of faith in the holy Mother Ganga. But this grand event also has a bitter memory and a problem associated with it, which has been a headache for the travelers and local residents for the last five decades – the massive traffic jam on the Delhi-Lucknow National Highway (NH-9).
The history of vehicles stopping on the highway during the Ganga Fair in Brajghat is almost 50 years old. According to local elders and records, after the construction of the bridge on river Ganga in Garhmukteshwar in 1962, for the first time in 1975, on the occasion of bathing in Ganga, long queues of vehicles got so entangled that the traffic system could not get back on track for two consecutive days. Since then, this horrifying picture of highway jams on Kartik Purnima and other major Ganga bathing festivals has been repeated almost every year. But this time after getting a new and stronger option in the form of modern infrastructure i.e. ‘Ganga Expressway’, a master plan has been prepared to break this 50 years old curse.
Now the eyes of the entire region are on whether this painful tradition of traffic jam which has been going on for five decades is broken this time, or whether the same old and tired scene is seen on the Delhi-Lucknow Highway. In fact, in this historical fair held in the sandy plains of Brajghat and Garh Khadar, lakhs of devotees reach not only from western Uttar Pradesh but also from the country’s capital Delhi, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Noida, Bulandshahr and neighboring states of Rajasthan and Haryana in tractor-trolleys, cars, buses and two-wheelers.
As the crowd of devotees increases in the fair, the pressure of vehicles on the Delhi-Lucknow highway becomes many times more than its capacity. When the situation worsens, small passenger vehicles as well as big cargo vehicles get stuck on the road and within no time a queue of vehicles several kilometers long forms. Due to this jam, even ordinary passengers going from Delhi towards Moradabad, Bareilly and Lucknow have to remain stranded on the road for hours, hungry and thirsty. Sometimes the situation becomes so dire that even providing passage to ambulances and emergency services vehicles carrying serious patients becomes a big challenge for the police administration.
The negative impact of this massive traffic jam at Brajghat is not limited only to the problems of common travelers, but it also badly affects the economic activities of the entire region. To control the traffic during the fair, the administration is forced to stop the movement of heavy goods vehicles on the highway for a week. Due to this, the supply chain of essential commodities in the local markets of Hapur, Garhmukteshwar and surrounding districts gets disrupted.
Apart from this, the raw material does not reach the industrial units of the area on time and they have to face a lot of difficulty in sending the finished goods from the factories to the markets. Local traders, entrepreneurs and transporters suffer direct economic losses worth crores of rupees during this one week every year. In simple words, amidst the immense faith in bathing in Ganga, the local economy of Hapur also gets stuck under the wheels of traffic jam every year.
This time both the administration and the general public are hopeful that the picture of the system is going to change completely. The opening of the Ganga Expressway has provided a fast and seamless alternative route for long distance vehicles. The police and the district administration have prepared a concrete action plan, under which the vehicles coming to and from the fair and the heavy traffic on the Delhi-Lucknow route will be diverted towards the Ganga Expressway through designated cuts and interchanges. Due to this, there will be no pressure of additional vehicles on the old Delhi-Lucknow highway.
The confidence of the administration has increased significantly due to the uninterrupted flow of traffic on the highway during the recently implemented initial route diversion. However, the challenge before the authorities is not just to keep the highways free, but also to ensure smooth movement of lakhs of devotees to the urban fair of Brajghat and the rural fair of Garh Khadar, management of huge parking spaces, security of bathing ghats and maintaining well-maintained local connectivity routes. Now the highway can be kept jam-free by shifting the heavy traffic to Ganga Expressway at every time of need, which has raised hopes that this year the journey of devotees and pedestrians during Kartik Ganga Snan will be very smooth and memorable.