Breathe Easy: 10,000 autos to go off the road in Bengaluru

·Apart from scrapping 4 stroke autos in the City, the old vehicles and goods carriers will be banned soon ·This task will be done in a phased manner

Lakshman, Chairman of KSPCB, the man behind this decision is more than happy and says the decision was taken after seeing the unbearable air pollution in Delhi as a result of  increase in vehicular population.

Apart from scrapping 4 stroke autos in the City, the old vehicles and goods carriers will be banned soon.  "The proposal of  removing old vehicles off the road, that have been registered 15 years ago and failed the fitness certification will soon be passed. The board also has sent notices to the transport department and also traffic department to implement the ban of goods carriers on City roads and ensure these carriers run only on the Outer Ring Road," Lakshman said

CP Narayanswamy, Additional Commissioner of Transport, has given instructions to all the Regional Road Transport Office (RTOs) in Bengaluru to start identifying such autos and warn them to change their 4-stroke noisy and air polluting vehicles to 2 stroke within a specific time period.

"We will to do this task in a phased manner. The auto driver once identified, will be asked to submit his documents to the concerned RTOs and apply for new vehicles. The government will also give them Rs 30,000 as subsidy to purchase new autos. This exercise is to make the environment clean," he said. A new autorickshaw will cost a person Rs 1,65,000 excluding accessories, registration and related costs.

However this announcement has been condemned by the Auto Rickshaw Drivers unions saying this move will affect the daily wage earners as there is lot of confusion in the rules.

In 2016, about 11,000 autos drivers voluntarily gave up 4-stroke autos after the government promised the Rs 30, 000 subsidy, till now only 900 have got the amount and for the rest, they had to borrow from private money lenders and take new autos. "If the government makes an arrangement for 10,000  new 2-stroke autos and asks the drivers to switch, then it will have a meaning. All of a sudden they cannot stop us and seize the vehicle as we are daily wage earners," said Manjunath, President Adarsh Auto Rickshaw Drivers Union.