If there is an illegality that continues unabated in the district right under the nose of police and regional transport officials, despite tall claims of “stringent” action being taken against the perpetrators, it is use of autorickshaws as ‘share autorickshaws’ to transport as many as 10 people against the permitted capacity of three passengers.
What is more is that these autorickshaws are driven haphazardly on roads, thereby putting the lives of others at risk. The ‘contract carriage’ permits issued to autorickshaws allow them to be operated only from one point to another. However, in reality, these vehicles are illegally used like ‘stage carriages’ to pick up and drop passengers en route at will.
In the process, they end up posing a grave threat to the passengers as well as other road users. “The biggest challenge on road is to ride or drive a vehicle safely near these autorickshaws. We will never know when the drivers would apply brakes or turn left or right without any indication in their eagerness to scout for passengers and pick them up,” says P. Pandian of Othakadai here.
It is in this context that advocate P. Balamurugan of Palanganatham had filed a public interest litigation petition in the Madras High Court Bench here last year to forbear the Transport Secretary, Additional Director General of Police – Traffic, and Madurai Regional Transport Authority (Collector) from allowing ‘Ape’ brand of autorickshaws to be operated as either share autos or stage carriages.
Filing a counter affidavit in reply to the petition, Collector K. Veera Raghava Rao told the court that ‘Ape’ brand of autorickshaws should also carry only three passengers at a time from one point to another though they were larger in length (2,940 mm), width (1,485 mm) and height (1,750 mm) compared to other brands whose dimensions were 2,635 mm, 1,300 mm and 1,692 mm respectively.
He also informed the court that 7,069 permits had been issued to Ape autorickshaws in Madurai district, and 2,352 of the permits had been issued by Madurai South Regional Transport Office (RTO); 3,022 by Madurai North and 1,695 by Madurai Central RTO. Apart from these permits, 14,855 permits had been issued for other brands of autorickshaws.
Further, providing the result of action taken by the transport authorities to prevent misuse of autorickshaw permits in 2015 and 2016, he said 1,648 check reports were issued with respect to Ape brand of autorickshaws in the district for offences such as overloading and alteration of seats, and that a compounding fee of ₹4.58 lakh was collected.
Conceding that the High Court had issued directions to the officials in the past too to crack down on autorickshaws which misused their permits, the Collector said: “The respondents are continuing with their enforcement work more effectively to ensure that Ape type autos do not indulge in illegal plying as alleged by the petitioner and awareness is also created to avoid dangerous travel.”
On his part, the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Tallakulam Traffic Range, Madurai city, filed statistics claiming to have booked 1,24,148 cases between January 2015 and June 2017 against all brands of autorickshaws for offences such as demanding excess fare (13,653), plying without meters (8,234), overloading (23,167), seat alteration (1,678) and other issues (77,416).
The police also submitted before the court that they had collected ₹1.67 crore as fine amount from the violators. However, neither the police nor the transport authorities informed the court of the number of permits that had been cancelled so far for committing the offences repeatedly.
Therefore, passing interim orders on the PIL petition on Tuesday, the First Division Bench of the High Court comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana issued a specific direction to the officials to suspend as well as cancel licences of the autorickshaws that continued to flout permit conditions.
The judges also directed the officials to submit the latest details regarding suspension and cancellation of permits by next month. Now, it is to be seen how effectively would the officials implement the latest court order and how many permits would they cancel for repeated violations.
