Police Commissioner's lamebrain idea

The Police Commissioner wants to reserve the Freedom Park for rallies. How this will solve the problem since the upcoming park which is located bang in the middle of the high traffic zone of Seshadri Road, only he can explain. Are the protestors going to air drop into the site? Will traffic not be held up as they move in and out of there?

Dharam Singh pledges a Hyde Park in city
New Indian Express

The government has finally woken up to the horror that common people are facing on account of rallies and protests in the city. Chief Minister Dharam Singh on Friday assured that his government will put an end to such disturbances.

“A suitable place for staging protests, which will not affect traffic will be identified,” he told reporters on Friday. Singh was speaking after releasing an International Business Directory 2004-05 at his home-office ‘Krishna’. The government was serious in allocating such a place, Singh said.

The city police had identified a number of open places as suitable venues for organising protests peacefully and had put forward the proposal to the government more than six months ago. Foremost among the venues is the Freedom Park, which is coming up on the erstwhile Central Jail premises in Gandhinagar.

“I had suggested that five to six acre at the Central Jail be earmarked for this. The CM has reacted to it,” police commissioner S. Mariswamy said, confident of a positive outcome. He was speaking at a public meeting with Jayanagar residents on Friday.

“It is an urgent requirement,” Mariswamy said, explaining that if traffic is held up for just 5 minutes, it will take more than an hour to recover. Mariswamy also admitted that the police were facing problems for the past two days on account of the BJP’s week-long dharna and several other protests running simultaneously.

Mariswamy expressed surprise that the civic authorities were still setting deadlines to fill up potholes when the need of the hour is better infrastructure like subways, walkovers and so on.

A paradigm shift in planning was needed, he opined. Crime, law and order was no longer a challenge to the police but traffic was and that could be met only with infrastructure, he said