Tirupati: Anyone taking a stroll down Municipal Office circle on Tilak Road will swear that traffic snarls have become a routine these days. And they know the reason too.

The major junction in the heart of the temple town, which always bursts at its seams during peak hours, has of late become the worst-hit traffic bottleneck. The denizens' cup of woes started overflowing after the bronze statue of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was installed in the middle of the road by Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy last year.

The statue, though ready long ago, had not been installed during the last regime due to obvious reasons. Immediately after the change of guard, the first thing the State Government did was installation of `their' leader's statue.

Five roads meet at this peculiarly-shaped junction, the mid-point of which is not situated exactly in the centre but is skewed a bit towards the VV Mahal Road. Naturally, the circle's locus should have been located at this point in the form of a traffic island. But the Government went ahead with its plan of installing it close to the main entrance of the Municipal Office, perhaps viewing that the statue should be overlooking the road ahead of it. The Congress leaders had openly claimed then that erecting the statue in front of the Municipal Office, where the TDP is in rule or not, would be the best form of humiliation to those who `deliberately' ignored their leader's statue.

Unable to cope with the increasing traffic, the municipality has decided to move back and even got its grilled compound demolished recently. The grills, with ornate carvings, were erected only four years ago at a cost of Rs. 12 lakh. And now, leaving some five feet towards the road, the civic body is building a compound wall incurring an avoidable expenditure of Rs. 8 lakhs.

As the corrective operation has been started any way, the municipal authorities have decided to go ahead according to Vaastu. As such the main entrance is being shifted towards the East, the wall on the north-western side is being raised and the removed grills re-erected on its diagonally-opposite south-eastern side, considered a weight balancing act.

"We had to demolish the compound due to reasons well known. So, we want to go by Vaastu this time to avoid similar problems in future," a municipal official told The Hindu . With no other option left, the municipal council too had to approve the work.

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