The district police have resolved to carry on with the crackdown on overloaded sand-laden lorries despite the indefinite strike threat called by the truck operators to protest the ‘rampant booking of cases’ against them from Thursday.
On Monday too, around 400 lorries with sand were booked and fines ranging from Rs. 3,000 to Rs. 15,000 were imposed on its operators for overloading across the district.
Superintendent of Police Asra Garg told The Hindu that the rules stipulate that only two units (about 7.5 tonne) could be carried in a lorry at a time.
But it was pointed out by the police officials, who intercepted the trucks coming from mainly Karur district, that all the vehicles seized were having loads almost six to seven tonnes above the permissible limits.
Ridiculous
A senior police official termed the truck operators reasoning for the strike call as ‘ridiculous.’
“They have called the strike to condemn the Tirupur Superintendent of Police for taking action against overloading which means that they are fighting to obtain ‘illegal rights’ by overruling transportation and motor vehicles rules,” he said. Activists are supporting the crusade by the police as, according to them, each lorry with overloaded sand causes loss to the exchequer and damages the river ecology.
“Huge quantities of sand mined from river beds against the allowed quantity will affect the drinking water schemes and threaten the very existence of the rivers like Cauvery from where the mining is rampant,” they pointed out.
Above all, the sands are then loaded and transported in high-heaps on trucks which too were against the rules.
