Had their vote failed them? Has the tax they paid over the decades only gone down the drain? Are they left in the lurch with the government turning a blind eye to their problems? Such were the questions protesters of #SaveWhitefield asked the government by displaying placards.
Clad in black, they marched in groups from seven locations to assemble at a common point. Led by an anchor and sub-anchor, each of these groups formed a human chain all the way to the ITPL road around 12 pm. ‘Do not shout.
The government, BBMP is sleeping' (sic), ‘Please show me the road to my school’, ‘My tax and vote has failed’. Placards carried by the protesters with such slogans caught the attention of commuters and motorists passing by.
In an already crippled Whitefield area, there was slow-moving traffic with the protesters gathering in large numbers.
While some protesters took buses to reach ITPL from the assembly points, a few walked all the way and others cycled. The protest did not surprise many commuters. While most of the employees chose to take to the streets, for a few others, Monday morning was like any other. For traffic cops, it was a hard day managing the crowd.
Head constable K Sathyanarayana, Whitefield traffic police, said the crowd swelled the most at ITPL after 11.30 pm. He added that as many as 30 police personnel, including traffic cops from the Whitefield traffic police station, were deployed at the spot to manage the protesters and handle the traffic movement.
Among the protesters were residents of the area, those who worked in the IT hub and also a group of concerned parents whose children studied at one of the schools in that locality.
In what she termed a terrible experience, Chetali, who resides near the Ryan School, said that on November 16, when the City saw incessant rainfall, it took her child five hours to reach home from school. She added that several schools in the area had also changed their timings to make it convenient for children to reach schools.
Pravir Bagrodia, spokesperson, Whitefield Rising, said the government had to put pedestrian safety on the priority list.
“There are no streetlights after the Marathahalli Bridge. We need more skywalks at the main junctions such as near Hope Farm Junction, Graphite, Hoodi and Kundanahalli Gate,” he said, adding that there were no zebra crossings either at any of the major junctions.