Tripura High Court directs immediate ban on motor driven paddle rickshaw

While hearing the contempt petition yesterday, the bench comprising of Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Arindam Lodh observed that their order of ensuing non-plying of converted paddle rickshaw was completely flouted by the city administration as well as by the state government.

Hearing a Public Interest Litigation filed by a Lawyer, the court had found that the converted manual rickshaw were the most risky mode of transportation. The manually regulated rickshaws have got high speed following conversion that resulted, a large number of accidents and even a death incident of a child was happened last year. Since, there is no safety mechanism in the rickshaw or not covered by insurance the passengers have no protection.

The Advocate General of the state Arun Bhowmik argued though illegal, about 10,000 such paddle rickshaws had been converted into motor driven and now the state government faced a challenge of the livelihood issues of those families. However, the state government has been working on the alternative plan to solve the problem complying the court order but election process had delayed the process.

The court turned down the argument and said protection of life of innocent people is more important than the livelihood of those rickshaw pullers who had illegally converted the paddle rickshaw. The court directed district magistrate West Tripura, SP West Tripura and SP Traffic besides, municipal commissioner to swing into action for executing the order immediately. Otherwise, they will be held personally responsible for non-compliance of the direction.

The court also found Tripura Battery Operated Rickshaw Rule 2014 and 2019 was repugnant to M V Act 1988 and canceled it accordingly.

In the earlier order court observed, “We are faced with very piquant situation where the authorities be it the Municipal Corporation, Agartala or the District Administration, are passing on the burden of responsibility upon each other and without taking any concrete action, are allowing illegality to be perpetuated by not stopping or regulating operation of manually driven rickshaws with a special purpose battery powered installed therein, thus endangering the life and safety of the passengers using such rickshaws as also the passersby.”

The petitioner further explained the court that the public transport in Tripura has been weaken over past few years despite getting huge fund for introducing dedicated, affordable and assured bus service in the city areas under JNNURM. The buses procured for the city were connected to other towns and destinations for inter-district connectivity.

Instead, small vehicles like auto-rickshaw, battery operated rickshaw and converted paddle-rickshaws were allowed to run as public means of transport without taking care of the passengers’ rights, safety, comfort and services. As a result, small and personalized vehicles in Agartala and few other towns have registered an abnormal growth, which caused traffic congestion, increase level of pollution as well as road accident.