Patna: Authorities in Bihar will grant prospective grooms with police escorts to their weddings, following a growing number of complaints in which close to 1,000 marriage ceremonies were badly disrupted and had to be rescheduled owing to slow-moving traffic last month.
Authorities said they had been moved after realising that several grooms and their families had reached their wedding venues quite late — sometimes, even after guests had already left the venue.
All the incidents had occurred after the concerned parties had encountered severe traffic jams, which have now become the order of the day in the capital of Patna and its surrounding neighbourhoods.
Officials said the state’s police, in collaboration with traffic police, would now keep records of the dates of marriages, before visiting the local community halls, or other locations where the weddings will be held, in order to plan how traffic will move on the big day.
After getting the full details of the weddings from the families of the grooms, police will then make special traffic arrangements along the busy main roads, state highways or national highways to ensure the grooms and their marriage processions reach the wedding venues on time.
Officials said additional police forces would also be deployed along the identified routes to ensure other motorists do not intrude and thus disturb the marriage processions.
Special instructions
“We have issued special instructions to all the police stations in the city and have asked them to make exclusive traffic arrangements to help the grooms and the other wedding party members reach the wedding venue [at the time the event is supposed to start,” Shivadeep Lande, Patna’s superintendent of police, told Gulf News yesterday.
“This is just a token of support from our side.”
He said police will divert heavy traffic on the big day to ensure grooms reach the venue without having any bitter memories of their wedding day. This is the first time in the state such efforts have been initiated by the police.
Of late, traffic jams have become the order of the day in Patna and even in suburban areas.
The situation has been aggravated by an increasing number of vehicles sold in recent years, owing to improved road conditions across the state.
An official report said vehicle sales in Bihar increased from around 80,000 in between 2005 and 2006 to 310,000 in 2009-10, an increase of around 400 per cent over the last five years presided over by the Nitish Kumar government in the state