Buyers jostling for space at a makeshift vegetable market made a mockery of social distancing at Jai Prakash Udyan at Adityapur in the adjoining Seraikela-Kharsawan district on Sunday.

Vendors, who had been selling vegetable near Adityapur police station for years, were on Friday ordered to shift base to the nearby park on a forest land.

On Sunday morning, the park was teeming with people engaged in panic buying.

Besides vegetables, youths were spotted selling sugarcane juice and sattu sharbat.

Enforcement of social distancing, which is necessary to contain community transmission of the deadly novel coronavirus, took a backseat as scores of people from Bistupur in Jamshedpur turned up to buy vegetables at Adityapur.

The Seraikela-Kharsawan district administration had planned to put up barricades at the entrance to the park to control the entry of buyers, but failed to install them.

This led to people entering the park in droves.

“Social distancing has gone for a toss at Jai Prakash Udyan. There is nobody to control the crowd, which cares little about the gravity of the situation. Police have put up barricades at both ends of the Kharkai bridge to prevent people from unnecessarily venturing out of their homes, but are paying no attention to the chaos at the park. It seems like we are giving an invitation to the virus,” local resident Rajnikant Prajapati said.

Seraikela-Kharsawan DC A. Dodde admitted the problem and promised to put things in order soon.

“We have been spreading awareness on social distancing, but people are not understanding its importance,” he told The Telegraph. “We will initiate steps to put things in order. Social distancing is a key in the battle against coronavirus,” he added.