1 lakh autos in city, but only 1 gadget to detect rigged meters

Even as the Andheri Regional Transport Office (RTO) booked 51 erring auto drivers for rigged meters on Wednesday, the Wadala RTO could detect fewer cases as there is just one gadget between the two RTOs that can detect that meters have been tampered with. Prajakta Chavan reports.

Even as the Andheri Regional Transport Office (RTO) booked 51 erring auto drivers for rigged meters on Wednesday, the Wadala RTO could detect fewer cases as there is just one gadget between the two RTOs that can detect that meters have been tampered with.

HT Image

There are more than one lakh autos that operate in the eastern and western suburbs, but with just one instrument, called the fault detector, the two RTOs cannot conduct simultaneous drives.

“Without using this gadget, we cannot do spot detections, and it would take more than an hour to check a single meter. We have stopped our drive currently, but we will resume it once we get the gadget from Andheri,” said a Wadala RTO official, on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

Sujit Patil, an automobile expert and former lecturer at a city polytechnic college, assembled the gadget for the Andheri RTO. Officials have now requested him to make more gadgets.

“I have received a request from the RTO authorities to assemble more gadgets. I will deliver two more gadgets soon,” Patil told HT.

So far in December, the RTOs have booked 482 autos and taken action against 240 autos for rigged meters. A penalty of Rs 5 lakh has been recovered.