Delhi: autos off road today over police atrocities

If you travel to your workplace or college by auto-rickshaw, look for an alternative on Monday. Upset with alleged police atrocities, the auto-rickshaw unions have called a one-day symbolic strike.

If you travel to your workplace or college by auto-rickshaw, look for an alternative on Monday. Upset with alleged police atrocities, the auto-rickshaw unions have called a one-day symbolic strike.

“If we don’t get a written assurance from senior police officers that their staff will be reined in, we will stop working beyond 4pm from Thursday,” Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (transport unit) vice-president Rajendra Soni said.

At least 40,000 auto-rickshaw drivers are affiliated to BMS.

Soni added that the drivers will be out in full strength on Eid, which is on Tuesday. But they will be back protesting alleged police high-handedness Thursday onwards.

The unions allege that traffic and local police demand money from auto-rickshaw drivers to ply at railway and Metro stations, and threaten to challan them and impound their vehicles if they don’t pay a bribe.

Interestingly, the AAP has called a ‘mahasabha’ of auto-rickshaw drivers, its major political base in the last assembly polls, on July 31.