Bus operators have once again managed to scuttle the Motor Vehicles Department’s (MVD) move to make door shutters mandatory for stage carriers operating in the city and town areas, this time thanks to an opportunity presented by the Ernakulam Regional Transport Authority (RTA).
The RTA had asked bus operators concerned to fall in line by November 6 in accordance with a direction of the transport commissioner based on a government notification issued last July amending Rule 280(2) of Kerala Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989, removing the exemption of front and rear doors for city and town services.
This was after the bus operators challenged the notification in the High Court last year on the ground that installing normal doors posed operational difficulties and hence should be replaced by pneumatic doors. While considering the petition, the court asked the MVD to file a statement on behalf of the government though it did not issue any interim stay on the implementation of the notification except for an oral observation.
Informed sources said the MVD could have gone about implementing the notification in a low key affair taking advantage of the fact that the court had not issued any stay. But then the RTA came out with a direction giving operators fresh ground to seek a stay, which they succeeded in getting.
“We have already moved the court to get the stay vacated although the stay has just been issued for a month and will expire by the middle of this month. We will clarify before the court that the government has already passed a law making door shutters mandatory for city and town services across the State,” a senior government official said. Interestingly, it remains unclear why the government has still not bothered to file a counter affidavit before the court even after one and a half years despite the fact that there have been many instances in which commuters were thrown to their deaths from buses operating without doors.
The government has also failed to expose how the very same bus operators, who had back in 2011, opposed a draft government notification for introducing pneumatic doors on ground of viability had now demanded the same to put brakes on the government move to make doors mandatory.
