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Chaos as diesel cabbies of Delhi protest

The ban by the court came just days after the end of another two weeks of “odd-evenâ€that kept about one million cars off Delhi's roads.

New Delhi: The city groaned under traffic woes on Monday as hundreds of cab drivers blocked National Highway 8 and ring road, protesting against action by enforcement agencies following the Supreme Court's decision to ban diesel taxis in Delhi.

In the early hours, a group of protesters blocked both carriageways near the Rajokri toll booth on National Highway 8, which led to a long tailback stretching over a kilometer in the area, traffic officials said.

The situation turned worse at around 11.30 am when the protesters blocked both carriageways on the Ring Road stretch at Maharani Bagh, close to Ashram Chowk. In no time, traffic was thrown out-of-gear in Dhaulakuan, Kapashera and Mehrauli, and the chaos continued for hours.

The congestion largely affected thousands of office-goers who travel between Delhi and Gurgaon, linked by NH-8, and the traffic helpline was bombarded with calls from distressed commuters, officials said.

The protesters included the diesel cab drivers with All India tourist permits (AITP), who are exempted from the ban provided they operate outside NCR.

After extending the deadline twice, the Supreme Court had on Saturday refused to give more time to cab operators to convert to CNG and put a ban on diesel cabs in the city from May 1. The court exempted taxis with all-India tourist permit from switching to CNG if they operate outside NCR.

According to Delhi transport department, about 60,000 taxis are registered in the national capital of which 27,000 run on diesel. Around 2,000 diesel-run taxis had converted into CNG mode in the last two months.

Delhi Police later booked over a hundred diesel-run taxi drivers for plying their vehicles in the city violating the Supreme Court ban. “Over 100 drivers were booked till 7 pm and challans were issued to them. Vehicles were impounded in a few cases,” Special Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Sandeep Goel said.

Meanwhile, the Delhi government impounded as many as 39 taxis by app-based cab aggregators such as Uber for invoking surge pricing, a day after Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal warned of strong action.

Transport Minister Gopal Rai also announced a dedicated helpline for passengers to lodge complaints against those violating the Delhi government’s directive against surge pricing. “If any cab is charging extra money in the name of surge pricing please call 01142400400. We will take strong action,” Rai tweeted.

A Delhi government official said four cabs were impounded on the basis of complaints received on the dedicated helpline till afternoon while action against the rest was taken on complaints received via other channels including the department's helpline number 42400400.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle with agency inputs )
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