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| Ahead of arrival of Durbar, Jammu roads getting royal touch | | | Syed Junaid Hashmi
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Oct 28: 136 year old 'Durbar move' may have lost its substance but its royal touch is intact since it was the arrival of royalty from the state's summer capital that stirred the otherwise seemingly paralysed administrative machinery of Jammu into taking hasty and ritual 'decorative action' at the expense of the common man.
For months together, ill planned dug-up roads across the winter capital city, including the one towards the Chief Minister's official residence, have been crying for attention of road building/repair department as also the traffic managing police department. The cries and shrieks of hapless commuters including those in their twilight years went unheeded until the 'royal durbar' of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah made its move from Srinagar.
Ribbon cutting exercises or private functions and parties did bring the Mantris, Babus and Santris to Jammu but since none of them prefers to travel by foot, few among them are even aware of the miseries of common man. Days ahead of the durbar's arrival, local machinery has swung into action, set deadline for Public Works Department (PWD) to complete what is being described officially as double macadamization by October 31 and got the roads leading to civil secretariat decked up overnight.
Noticeable hasty patch work being referred to as 'double macadamization' and other repairs within two days prior to opening of 'Durbar' is being matched by extensive deployment of traffic control staff which otherwise maintains complete invisibility in the areas where roads were dug-up and needed practiced and extensive management.
Traffic police earned a name for itself among the locals for maintaining complete invisibility from almost all the dug-up areas until the arrival of durbar. Scenes of traffic mess have become a matter of routine on the ever busy and extremely vital Residency Road area, which houses the party headquarters of coalition partners viz. National Conference (NC) and Congress besides official residences of all the cabinet ministers including Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.
"The traffic would increase by 110 times. This patch work would not be able to bear this much of traffic flow. Moreover, other departments who have their equipments on these roads are surely going to dig these roads once again," added a senior PWD official on conditions of anonymity.
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