The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : ECR turns an easier road to revelry

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 02, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

ECR turns an easier road to revelry

T.S. Shankar and L. Srikrishna

New Year-eve celebrations went off peacefully, say police The hospitality sector was happy with "the cooperation of the law-enforcing agencies''.

REVELLERS, REJOICE!: A group of youngsters celebrate a New Year-eve party at Elliots Beach, Besant Nagar, on Sunday midnight. — Photo: N. Sridharan

T.S. Shankar and

L. Srikrishna

CHENNAI : Almost all farm houses on East Coast Road, beach-front villas and resort hotels were "main places of activity'' on Sunday midnight as droves of Chennai residents drove along the ECR for New Year celebrations.

While the entire ECR, especially on the seaside, was the most sought after with farmhouses and resort hotels playing a full house, the stretch between Neelankarai and Kanathur, located after the toll plaza, was packed with New Year revellers. Some of them even went up to Mamallapuram and more adventurous people drove to Puducherry.

According to sources in the South India Hotels and Restaurants Association, the hospitality sector was happy with "the cooperation of the law-enforcing agencies," which had geared up their machinery.

"The hospitality sector continues to be buoyant and we are beginning the New Year on a happy note on the business front too.

A beach-front Hotel at Mamallapuram had a business of over Rs.10 lakh on the New Year bash itself without counting the room tariff and other services", said a spokesperson of the hotel and a senior office-bearer of the South India Hotels and Restaurants Association.

Incident-free

Commissioner of Police Letika Saran had said "the public can have fun, but not on the roads".

Keeping this in mind, the police made elaborate bandobust arrangements, which saw the New Year-eve c/elebrations pass off smoothly.

Talking to The Hindu , Additional Commissioner of Police S. R. Jangid said here on Monday that the police had geared its force and worked out the modalities on how to handle the revellers on Sunday night. "We did not receive any complaints of road accidents.

There were no cases of drunken brawl, rowdy acts, crime incidents or other kinds of complaints reported during the night.

Right from the Marina to the ECR, the patrol vehicles ensured that there was no bottleneck anywhere on the road for free vehicle movement," he said.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Sunil Kumar said, "we had put in a phenomenal effort and of course, with the cooperation of public, we saw the celebrations end smoothly and incident-free.

Many volunteers and road safety enthusiasts joined the police in distributing pamphlets at vantage points.

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