Units engaged in assembling unlicensed battery-operated rickshaws in Calcutta and districts will be shut down, the state government has decided.
Many of the e-rickshaws, commonly referred to as totos, are illegal because their prototypes haven’t been cleared by government institutes working on vehicle safety, such as the Central Institute of Road Transport in Pune or International Centre for Automotive Technology in Haryana, transport department officials said.
Battery-operated rickshaws, introduced in 2014 through an amendment to the Motor Vehicles Act 1980, are a non-polluting mode of transport but have remained largely unregulated in Kolkata and the districts.
Calcutta High Court has passed several orders since 2018 to the Bengal government to crack down on illegal totos.
The government has shied away from taking action citing law and order concerns.
“We have now decided that officers from the regional transport authorities (RTAs) will identify the units that assemble illegal e-rickshaws and take steps against them,” state transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty told The Telegraph.
“We have communicated the government’s decision to all district magistrates.”
In a recent set of messages to the RTAs, the transport department has said FIRs have to be lodged against the units found assembling unauthorised e-rickshaws. A team will then reach such a unit with the police and seal it.
“At least five such units have been sealed in Howrah and South 24-Parganas,” an official in the transport department said.
The official said an authorised e-rickshaw has to have proper registration papers, licence plates, tax tokens and route permits. An authorised e-rickshaw has to be driven by a person who has a driving licence.
“Such vehicles have to follow certain specifications as well,” the official said.