Autorickshaw drivers in Pune Monday morning resumed their strike over the unfulfilled demand of stopping bike taxi services in the city.
On November 28, the drivers held a strike which was called off after the promise of resolving their issues by December 10. With this deadline passing without a resolution, Baghtoy Rickshawala Forum, which is coordinating the protests, announced that it would return to the protest site near Pune Regional Transport Office (RTO) from Monday morning and no autorickshaws would ply.
The rickshaw unions maintain that bike taxis have been operating “illegally” and hampering their business. The RTO must take action against bike taxis and stop their operations permanently, the unions say. Amidst pressure from the auto-rickshaw drivers’ union, the RTO conducted several drives against bike taxi aggregators, especially Rapido, in the past few years and seized the firms’ hundreds of bike taxis for a month. It also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on them.
“It has become clear that the RTO officials do not have any willpower to take action against the illegal bike taxis. The committee which was formed after our last agitation has not done any work. Hence, we have no option but to resume the agitation,” said Keshav Nana Kshirsagar, who heads the Forum.
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PremiumThere are over 1 lakh registered auto-rickshaws in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad with a majority of them being added to the roads since 2017 when the state government lifted the embargo on the issuance of fresh rickshaw permits. While the addition of fresh autorickshaws on the road increased the competition for individual drivers, additional pressure was put on them with the advent of cellphone-based taxi services (Ola, Uber) a few years ago. Things were made worse recently when bike taxis started operating in the city via cellphone-based booking companies such as Rapido.
