On the evening of 1 June 2026, a Bengaluru resident sat in the middle of Old Airport Road in protest after traffic police halted all movement for nearly 30 minutes to facilitate the convoy of the Karnataka Governor.

The man had his pregnant wife in the car and stepped out of his vehicle to question why ordinary citizens were being made to wait.

“Just because the Governor is a VIP, does that mean we are nobody?” he asked police officers — words that quickly spread across social media and reignited a familiar debate around VIP movement and public inconvenience.

The incident is far from isolated. Just a week earlier, hundreds of vehicles in Bihar’s Motihari remained stranded as traffic was stopped for an official convoy in temperatures reportedly touching 42°C. Frustrated commuters responded with continuous honking in protest.

For many Indians, these scenes are familiar: delayed ambulances, missed appointments, stalled school runs and long waits at intersections while convoys pass. But across several Indian cities and states, authorities are experimenting with ways to reduce disruption while maintaining security.

Broadly, these approaches fall into four models: reducing convoy size, keeping parts of roads operational during movement, limiting visible markers of privilege, and prioritising emergency access. Here is how different regions are attempting to minimise inconvenience during VIP movement.

Aizawl: The no-preferential-access model

Perhaps the most unusual example comes from Aizawl, where traffic management relies less on convoy protocols and more on a shared principle: public roads should remain public.

Unlike many cities where intersections are cleared ahead of VIP movement,........

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