Close call on VIP route

KK Paul

UNTIL a few years ago, winter in New Delhi used to be synonymous with the VIP season. Besides visits by foreign dignitaries, international conferences and events were usually scheduled during this period. That has since changed and the VIP season is now spread throughout the year.

Nikolai Ryzhkov was the Premier of the erstwhile Soviet Union when he visited New Delhi in 1987. The occasion was the inauguration of the Festival of Russia in India.

Indian hospitality being famous the world over, dignitaries are usually accorded felicitations far in excess of the requirements of protocol or reciprocity. As such, planning began much in advance, where it was decided among others that the agencies concerned should undertake beautification of the routes to be followed by the motorcade and also have a fresh coat of carpeting on the roads. Accordingly, to beautify the VIP routes, the civic agencies had ‘planted’ some greens and also put some metallic tree guards around them.

The highlight of the last evening was a musical concert at Siri Fort Auditorium by Russian artists. By the time the function ended, it was quite late and haze had set in. The Russian Premier was the first to depart, seen off by our Prime Minister, who followed. While the officers were also in the process of departing, an alarming message was received that something had been thrown on the VIP route. This was quickly followed by another message that both VIP motorcades had passed smoothly.

It was natural for the officers to reach the scene of incident near Kotla Mubarakpur. One of the tree guards had got dislodged after the Russian motorcade passed. The presence of mind shown by the advance pilot of our PM’s motorcade saved the situation by ensuring that the tree guard did not roll over on the main carriageway by stopping his vehicle at the curbstone itself. Had it rolled over in front of the speeding motorcade, the outcome could have been disastrous.

The difficult part of the whole episode was convincing oneself that this was accidental and not a part of any conspiracy. Better part of the night was spent in taking eyewitness accounts and soil markings on the legs of the tree guard. The site of uprooting was examined which established that the tree guard had not been dug in to a sufficient depth. We were also trying to ascertain from experts the extent of Bernoulli’s drag caused by an 8-tonne Zil, moving at a speed of nearly 100 km per hour and whether it would be sufficient to uproot the tree guard.

Finally, it was concluded that the exceptionally heavy Zil cars, which moved at high speed, had not only caused vibrations on the road, but also resulted in the uprooting of the tree guard.

An important lesson drawn was that superficial decoration work undertaken hurriedly could pose serious hazards.