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Bengaluru Cops Pretend to Be Passengers to Catch Rickshaw Drivers Refusing Rides

This is one drive almost every Indian city desperately needs!
Shamani Joshi
Mumbai, IN
BangaloreRickshaw
Photo: nikkul [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)] via Wikimedia Commons

Maybe it’s because we lack the patience to wait around for an app-powered pick-up or just enjoy the wind blowing through our hair for those few seconds when we’re not stuck in a traffic jam, but auto rickshaws really are a convenient blessing for commuters in India. That is, when the drivers are in a good mood, want to head in the same direction you do, and will get you there in one piece. Unfortunately, most of us are all too familiar with the frustration of being rejected by nine out of ten autowalas at the end of each working day (49 out of 50 if you work out of BKC like we do)—a move that’s legally not okay for a rickshaw driver to make, and one which can lead to their licenses being revoked.

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So, to put a stop to this blatant daylight robbery that most rickshaw drivers engage in, Bengaluru cops are cracking down on them after way too many people complained of getting ripped off for rickshaw rides. On Tuesday, December 3, 250 traffic cops across the Garden City ditched their uniforms, dressed up in regular clothes and pretended to be normal passengers seeking the services of an auto rickshaw. This way, they were able to catch rickshaw drivers breaking the rules red-handed, whether it was refusing to take the passenger for a ride or charging them extra despite being mandated by the law to operate on fare by meter.

Through this, cops have managed to weed out 5,200 drivers and have collected penalties amounting up to Rs 8 lakh. Out of these, 1,575 were booked for refusing to take the customer at all; 1,346 were caught for overcharging; and more than 2,000 others were taken in for driving without having their driver’s license or having proper documents. The cops also caught 492 drivers who were doing things like switching the name on the license with their own, even though the photos did not match.

The cops had undertaken a similar initiative back in July, catching almost 9,000 drivers going around flouting the rules in at least three out of the seven zones Bengaluru is divided into. Now, there are also talks of taking this to more cities, something almost everyone who has had to deal with a fussy autowala will agree is much needed. “These drives are important. Because of some auto drivers who over charge, all auto drivers get a bad name and people prefer Uber/Ola cabs instead of autos. This results in less business for us,” Narayan Swamy, President of Adarsh Auto Driver Union in Bengaluru told the News Minute. Hopefully, with more such drives, it’ll become more difficult for auto drivers to take us for a ride.

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