JNU students protest: Vasant Kunj residents caught in long snarls

NEW DELHI: The protest by JNU students led to the closure of Nelson Mandela Road, the main arterial road that connects Vasant Kunj with the rest of the city.
The road closure crippled the traffic in Sectors B, C and D of Vasant Kunj, which has a population of over one lakh. Residents, who usually commute by their own vehicles in the absence of the robust public transport system in this part of the city, had to take long detours via the Gurgaon-Dwarka Road and Mehrauli road to come to central Delhi.
Alerting VK residents about the blockade, Delhi traffic police in the evening tweeted, “Traffic Movement is closed on Nelson Mandela Marg from PS Vasant Vihar to PS Vasant Kunj due to demonstration. Kindly avoid the stretch.”
People who bore the brunt of the road closure were office-goers. Nelson Mandela Road usually has bumper-to-bumper traffic in the evening on weekdays as the entire traffic to VK converges on this road starting from the Munirka red light. As the road was closed, people returning from offices in the evening had to take different routes to reach their homes in VK.
Alerting residents about traffic woes via WhatsApp in the afternoon, Poornima Mishra, an advocate with lives in C-8 sector, posted, “Please don’t even think about stepping out... it’s a bad scene. I wonder how will residents come home when the Nelson Mandela has been shut.”
Another resident Anita Sharma said, “It’s absolute chaos. It took me half an hour from the mall road to C8 (which normally is a 5-minute drive).”
The closure of the road also hit the businesses of three big malls — Ambience, Promenade and DLF DLF Emporio —as all the three malls and Hyatt Grant Hotel are situated alongside it.