Police on Tuesday removed a portion of a hoarding that was blocking traffic lights near Acropolis Mall in Kasba and making it difficult for drivers to pass through the stretch.
Metro reported on Tuesday that it saw drivers waiting at the crossing baffled, not knowing whether the signal had turned green or red. A police constable had to run from one end of the street to another to wave at cars to signal them to move or stop.
A driver had said someone might accidentally drive on when the signal is red, resulting in an accident.
The police brought down a portion of a hoarding on Tuesday afternoon.
“Our objective is to ensure that the traffic signal is visible to drivers. We removed a portion of a hoarding that was blocking a signal post,” said an officer.
The horizontal bar of the hoarding, built in the shape of a goalpost, was removed. The signal became visible through the bamboo frames once the flex was taken away.
The hoarding had been put up there by an advertising agency for a local puja — Rajdanga Naba Uday Sangha. Sushanta Ghosh, councillor of Ward 108 and president of the puja committee, said it was “mistakenly” put there.
“When the police pointed it to us, we realised the mistake and the hoarding was removed,” he said.
This newspaper has been reporting about how hoardings have been put up across the city blocking the view of buildings, cutting off streetlights, eating away crucial space on narrow roads and even blocking surveillance TV cameras.
Officials of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC), the custodian of the city’s roads and pavements, have admitted off the record that they have no idea about how many such hoardings have been erected ahead of the Puja.
Bamboo frames with decorative lights erected across a flank of Southern Avenue remained on Tuesday. Erecting such structures across a road where buses ply is prohibited, a police officer said.
Nitai Chandra Basu, the sevait of Lake Kalibari temple, which organises the Puja and has built the structures, said they were unaware of the rule. “We will not build such structures from next year,” he said.
