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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Mumbai-Pune Expressway clogged over 24 hrs

Pune : The country’s oldest and first access-controlled Mumbai-Pune Expressway came to a grinding halt after a chemical tanker turned turtle on Tuesday evening – with thousands of vehicles stuck in traffic jams for over 24 hours – and the effects spilling over to the Old Highway No. 48 soon afterwards.   The vehicular snarl - described by locals as the worst-ever in the 26-year-old history of the critical thoroughfare linking the country’s commercial and cultural capitals – took the...

Mumbai-Pune Expressway clogged over 24 hrs

Pune : The country’s oldest and first access-controlled Mumbai-Pune Expressway came to a grinding halt after a chemical tanker turned turtle on Tuesday evening – with thousands of vehicles stuck in traffic jams for over 24 hours – and the effects spilling over to the Old Highway No. 48 soon afterwards.   The vehicular snarl - described by locals as the worst-ever in the 26-year-old history of the critical thoroughfare linking the country’s commercial and cultural capitals – took the travellers and the authorities by complete surprise leading to delayed response measures.   According to officials, the speeding tanker, carrying a highly inflammable and hazardous Propylene Gas, skidded and overturned in the tricky ghat sections near Ardoshi Tunnel yesterday evening around 5 pm, and blocked the Pune-Mumbai arm completely.   Police teams rushed to the accident spot, cordoned off the accident site, blocked the Pune-Mumbai 3-lanes and attempted to salvage the tanker.   Later, as a precautionary measure even the vehicles plying on Mumbai-Pune arm was closed and it started the ‘grandmother of all traffic jams’, stranding thousands of regular commuters, tourists, and special cases.   As the traffic didn’t budge for hours, angry motorists spewed their ire on social media drawing the attention of the Highway Police, and other local police departments from Raigad and Pune, plus teams of the SDRF and NDRF were deployed to avert any untoward incidents.   On Wednesday, local television reports showed clips of the traffic tie-ups that extended more than 45-50 kms kms in both directions, many travellers had spilled onto the roads, enraged and exhausted due to the heat, many frantically searching for elusive food and water making it harrowing for the kids or the elderly people.   Commuters’ travails on expressway Among the thousands trapped in the logjam of vehicles were a cancer patient from Latur who had to rush for medical treatment to Mumbai, many people rushing to catch international or domestic flights from either Mumbai or Pune.   There was at least one wedding party with the groom stuck in Mumbai and the bride stranded in Pune, plus many businessmen, tourists in luxury private buses, ST buses, senior citizens and kids in private cars or cabs and large commercial goods vehicles.   The curvy ghat section was the worst-hit where scores of vehicles had stopped and were parked awkwardly, leaving little space for manoeuvres and eyewitnesses said that many people were forced to relieve themselves on the roadside or in the bushes.   Several of the hungry and tired passengers, who spent the night sleeping in their vehicle seats, rued how their mobile batteries had died down, making it impossible to connect with anxious family members, and complained of total lack of information updates from the highway or police authorities.   As per latest reports by 7 pm, the police estimated that the overturned tanker would be shifted out before midnight after which normal plying of vehicles was expected.

Perpetual Protest

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has perfected the art of governance without governing. When confronted by scrutiny, she reaches instinctively for confrontation while alleging conspiracy and claiming victimhood. Her clash with the Election Commission in Delhi over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in her state is less a defence of democracy than a display of her chronic inability to coexist with authority she does not control.


Dragging along her political entourage and carefully curated ‘victims,’ Banerjee sought to turn a routine administrative exercise into a morality play with herself at its centre. Even before discussions with ECI authorities began, the atmosphere was poisoned with insinuations of intimidation and bad faith.


Inside the Election Commission’s headquarters, Banerjee arrived in protest mode and left in a huff, apparently unwilling to hear an explanation that did not validate her suspicions. The insistence of an independent constitutional body on legality and due process seemed to offend Banerjee’s sense of political entitlement.


The West Bengal CM’s politics has long been hostile to institutions that resist her will. Courts, central agencies, governors and now the Election Commission are all are portrayed as tools of an unseen enemy when they fail to fall in line. This permanent siege narrative has become a substitute for governance. It keeps the base mobilised while absolving the leadership of responsibility.


Her sudden concern for disenfranchised voters would be more convincing if West Bengal’s own electoral record were less blemished. The state’s elections are routinely marred by violence, intimidation and partisan administration. Opposition workers are chased off the field and local strongmen decide outcomes long before ballots are cast. To posture as the guardian of electoral purity while presiding over such a system requires either selective memory or breathtaking cynicism.


Equally hollow is her alarmism over SIR. Voter-roll revision is not a novelty, nor is it an assault on democracy. Banerjee’s approach, which is to discredit first and engage later suggests that the real fear is not exclusion of voters but loss of control over the process.


This style of politics erodes public trust in institutions, weakens federal norms and normalises the idea that constitutional bodies must bend before political pressure. Over time, it trains citizens to see rules as weapons and authority as illegitimate unless wielded by their own side.


West Bengal is paying the price of this permanent agitation. Administrative focus is diluted, economic revival remains elusive, and public discourse is coarsened by incessant confrontation. A Chief Minister who is always protesting is rarely governing. Banerjee may still command loyalty from her base through defiance and drama, but leadership demands restraint as much as resistance.


Her clash with the EC was not about voters’ rights but about power, control and an intolerance of scrutiny. Until that changes, her cries of democratic peril will continually sound like the familiar tantrums of a leader who mistakes volume for virtue and confrontation for courage.

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