Noida: For thousands of commuters, Monday morning began as an ordinary office run and quickly turned into a test of patience. What is usually a 30 to 45-minute drive on Delhi-Meerut Expressway (DME) stretched to two or even three hours after police began checking every vehicle at the UP Gate border ahead of Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) march to Jantar Mantar.As traffic piled up during peak office hours, one of NCR’s busiest corridors came to a crawl, throwing office schedules, school timings, court hearings and business appointments into disarray.The bottleneck began around 9.30am, when Delhi Police put up barricades at the border and started intensive vehicle checks. The exercise continued till about 11am, creating long queues on the expressway and spilling traffic back onto NH-9 and adjoining roads.Varun Singh, ADCP (traffic) in Ghaziabad, said the checking began suddenly, leaving little time for traffic cops on this side of the border to prepare for a tailback. “Because of the heavy traffic volume, vehicle movement slowed significantly. More than 50 personnel were deployed between Sector 62 and UP Gate to regulate traffic,” he added.ACP (Indirapuram) Suryabali Maurya said teams from Khoda, Indirapuram and Kaushambi police stations were rushed to the spot as soon as information about the checks came in. “We immediately deployed additional personnel to manage the congestion after Delhi Police began checking vehicles at the border,” he added.Police in Noida also launched simultaneous security checks at the border with the capital. Officials said suspicious vehicles and individuals were being thoroughly checked as part of heightened security arrangements and to maintain law and order.For commuters, however, the reason mattered little as journeys unravelled. Greater Noida lawyer Deepak Garg (33) left Sector 10 at 8.15am, expecting to reach Karkardooma court in 40 minutes for a 10am hearing in a cheque bounce case. Instead, he remained trapped on DME till nearly 11am.“I had requested the court for this date during the last hearing. When I realised I wouldn’t make it in time, I asked my junior to appear instead. The judge then asked me to join through video conferencing. How do I attend a VC while riding through crawling traffic? Do I watch the screen or the road,” he asked.Garg said he had initially planned to take the Kalindi Kunj route but switched after Google Maps showed congestion there. “DME turned out to be no better. I kept changing routes hoping to save time. Only later did I realise that the traffic was because of the CJP march. I still don’t know what I’m going to tell my client,” he added.Anurag Singh from Crossings Republik spent more than 90 minutes stuck in traffic. After negotiating routine congestion till the Sector 62 roundabout, he encountered another bottleneck at UP Gate, where vehicles were being asked for papers. Crossing the Ghazipur stretch alone took him over 45 minutes.Diksha Singhal, a software developer from Pratap Vihar who recently joined a startup in Delhi, left home at 9.30am but took more than two hours to reach her office at Mandi House.DK Singh, a senior manager from Vaishali, reached office at 10am instead of his usual 8.55am. “I never imagined that a protest at Jantar Mantar would delay me by so much. The stress stays with you for the rest of the day,” he said.For yoga instructor Sudhir Roy from Noida Sector 45, the congestion came at a financial cost.He missed two counselling sessions at Akshardham and Lajpat Nagar after clients cancelled because he was running late, leaving him poorer by about Rs 6,000. “I thought the protest was confined to Delhi. Only when I heard slogans and saw the march did I realise why traffic had come to a standstill,” he said.Others chose not to step out at all. Indirapuram resident Prabhu Gandhi, who found NH-9 glowing red on Google Maps, sought permission to work from home. “I was already running late. There was no point spending hours in traffic,” he said. .
