President Bidya Devi Bhandari used a helicopter to reach the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) to leave for state visit of Myanmar on Wednesday.
She used the chopper to go to the TIA as stopping vehicular movement for her motorcade created crippling traffic gridlocks that are widely criticized. But vehicles were stopped at the time of her visit despite use of chopper to fly to the TIA creating gridlocks during the peak hour.
The Metropolitan Police Traffic Division stopped vehicular movement in Lainchaur-Gairidhara-Naxal-Ratopool-Gaushala-Airport route Wednesday morning. It had even issued a notice stating that vehicular movement would be stopped in that route for an hour from 10:15-11:15 in the morning.
Spokesperson at the Division SP Ravi Kumar Paudel attributed the stopping of vehicles to motorcade of vice president. Vice-president Nanda Bahadur Pun went to the TIA from Lainchaur by road to see off President Bhandari. The route was evacuated for around an hour for his visit to the TIA and return to his residence in Lainchaur.
"Roads are evacuated even for vice-president. Vice-president acts as president during the foreign visit of president. The road was evacuated for his motorcade as well," Paudel explained.
He revealed that the roads are evacuated for state and formal visits of president, vice-president and prime minister. "We evacuated the road for a short duration even for the recent visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping. We have started to evacuate roads for a shorter duration as far as possible," he claimed.
He pointed that the roads would have to be evacuated for one hour even if President Bhandari had gone to the TIA by road. This means that there was not any relief for the commoners despite her using a chopper to fly to the TIA.
