Nagpur: The city is buckling under unprecedented traffic mayhem as the Winter Session enters its peak, turning Nagpur’s heart into a suffocating maze of barricades, diversions and VIP-driven standstills. What used to be routine seasonal inconvenience has exploded into a full-scale civic breakdown, exposing how far the city’s vehicle load has outgrown its ageing, narrow central corridors.
Central Nagpur, the administrative nerve centre, is now the epicentre of the chaos. Each evening, when ministers and VIPs crisscross the city for official events, long convoys paralyse major junctions for several minutes at a stretch. Motorists are forced to sit through signal after signal, watching green lights turn red again while police halt all movement for VIP passage.
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Residents say the city is being held hostage by “VIP culture.” The frustration is palpable: people are demanding that basic mobility for lakhs of commuters must not be sacrificed every time a convoy rolls out.
The total shutdown of the crucial Samvidhan Square-Akashwani Square corridor, the spine of east–west traffic, has brought Civil Lines and Sadar to their knees. To make matters worse, Vidhan Bhavan’s high-security ring has sealed off surrounding parallel roads, shoving vehicles into choked bylanes utterly incapable of handling peak-hour overflow.
The closure of the Commercial Road stretch, connecting the All Saints’ Cathedral CNI T-Point to Vidhan Bhavan Square, has severed direct north-south movement. Every alternate route is bursting. Short drives that once took ten minutes now drag on for forty.
“Earlier, session traffic was irritating. This year it feels like the entire city is collapsing,” said a Civil Lines resident. “No matter where you turn, you hit a wall of vehicles. There is simply no way out.”
Even the smaller lane behind the Nagpur Municipal Corporation headquarters, a usually dependable escape route, has been sealed, leaving commuters with nothing but snarled, chaotic roads.
Meanwhile, the Kamptee-Wardha Road belt, already battered by daily morchas and political gatherings outside Vidhan Bhavan, is witnessing snail-paced movement throughout the day. The gridlock spills into Kingsway, Red Cross Road, East and West High Court Roads, Palm Road, and portions of Amravati Road, all of which remained choked from morning till late evening.
Traffic police insist they have no choice. “Security protocols make these restrictions unavoidable,” a senior officer said. He added that manpower has been maximised and traffic teams are “making real-time adjustments,” though citizens say the relief on the ground is barely visible.
Nagpur’s daily life, for now, remains caged in barricades, diversions and bumper-to-bumper misery, with no clear end in sight until the Winter Session wraps up.
