Transporters defer strike by five days, likely to meet Chief Minister respite for people as no strike from January 17

Nitesh Sangral

1/15/2011 10:10:31 PM

Jammu, Jan 15: With Chief Minister likely to invite transporters for talks, they have deferred their proposed agitation for next five days, providing major relief to the people. The transporters which have threatened to go for indefinite strike from January 17, against the increase in the passenger tax and direction by the government to book the drivers under Section 307 of Ranbir Panel Code in case of accident, the Jammu and Kashmir Transport Association has said that they will give some more time to the government. Today the association held a three hour long meeting and decided to defer their proposed strike, which could have grounded more than 40000 private commercial vehicles. “We have received assurance that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah would meet us and we have deferred our agitation for five more days”, said Anil Chopra, president All Jammu and Kashmir Transport Association. He said that they are demanding scrapping of passenger tax and cases registered against drivers in connection with accidents under section 307 of Ranbir Panel Code. “Passenger tax is big burden on us as we are already under huge debt due to the rising prices of fuel and government should take into consideration our problems also”, Anil said. It is pertinent to mention here as in most of the accident cases, the drivers inability to control is vehicle has become the main reason for the accidents killing every years hundreds of people, government has imposed passenger tax to provide immediate compensation of Rs one lakh to the passengers killed in road accidents and Rs 50,000 to the injured. Due to rash driving, overloading and violation of rules there are an increase in the number of the accidents, deaths and injuries following which the state government has decided to slap section 307 RPC (attempt to murder) against drivers of buses and private cars. “ The decision would take transport industry towards extinction and it should be opposed by all the transporters”, Government decided to charge as yearly passenger tax Rs 15600 against the existing Rs 10400 on buses, Rs 2000 against Rs 600 on mini-buses, Rs 2000 against Rs 500 on Sumo and other like vehicles, Rs 300 against Rs 120 on auto-rickshaws. Besides, he said, the transporters strongly oppose the Government decision to initiate action against “driver, conductor and owner of a vehicle under Section 304 and 307 (attempt to murder) of RPC and Motors Vehicles Act in case of an accident.”