Hawkers to be shifted to decongest city roads

Rs 7 crore for traffic police headquarters

To streamline traffic, the government on Tuesday decided to remove encroachments and dislodge unauthorised hawkers occupying roads and provide sufficient police bandobast for the municipal corporations to carry out the task. To ensure strict compliance, officials failing to carry out the task would be penalised.

For more effective traffic control, it was decided to allot Rs 7 crore to set up a traffic police headquarters at Aundh, and post an additional commissioner of police and two deputy commissioners of police in the traffic police department.

This was decided in a meeting in Mumbai chaired by Deputy Chief Minister and Pune Guardian Minister Ajit Pawar.

The traffic control branch would get a separate control room equipped with modern gadgets. Parking of vehicles will not be allowed on congested roads with high-density traffic and the pay-and-park system would be brought in at certain spots.

With space not being available for a traffic division at police stations in the city, it was decided to make five gunthas available for the purpose. In view of the lack of space, another step would be to shift vehicles impounded by the traffic police to locations outside the city with court permission.

Other steps decided in the meeting included lessons on road safety in school and university syllabus, and a special committee comprising municipal commissioners, police commissioners and elected representatives to meet once a month to review of the traffic situation. A meeting would be held once in three months with the Guardian Minister to discus overall traffic issues.

Home Minister R R Patil, Minister of State for Home Satej Patil, Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Amitabh Ranjan, Principal Secretary (Urban Development) Manukumar Srivastava, Additional Municipal Commissioner Rajendra Jagtap, PCMC commissioner Shrikar Pardeshi, Pune Police Commissioner Gulabrao Pol, MLAs Girish Bapat, Neelam Gorhe, Dipti Chavdhari, Vilas Lande and Lakshman Jagtap were present in the meeting, among others.

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