Guj traffic decongestion drive making people jobless: Congress

The Congress today flayed the BJP government in Gujarat for its decongestion drive, being carried out in compliance with a High Court order, to ease traffic woes in Ahmedabad.

The party claimed that the state government and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation were to blame for the poor traffic situation on the city's roads and alleged that the drive had left thousands of roadside vendors jobless.

"The BJP government has failed to manage the city and its traffic which has caused the High Court to intervene and direct the city administration to take action," state Congress president Amit Chavda said.

"After the high court order, the corrupt system is carrying out a large-scale drive with no respect for rules. The police system is creating fear in the poor people who work hard to feed their families," he alleged.

"Action against street vendors and rickshaw drivers by Ahmedabad police and the civic administration is a way to hide their own failure to manage the city," Chavda added.

Ashok Punjabi, head of the state Congress' unorganised worker cell, said the party would hold rallies on August 9-10-11 in which vendors and autorickshaw drivers were expected to participate in large numbers.

"We support the high court order, but thousands of people have been rendered jobless due to the manner in which the drive is being carried out," Punjabi said.

He alleged that the state government was responsible for the "anarchy" created on the city's roads by autorickshaw drivers as it was issuing permits without creating adequate number of rickshaw stands.

"There are more than two lakh autorickshaws in Ahmedabad but only 2,100 stands for them," he said.

Punjabi claimed that the police were invoking section 283 (danger or obstruction in public way or line of navigation) of the IPC to harass the poor and extract hefty fines from them.

The Gujarat High Court had, while hearing a PIL last month, pulled up the authorities and asked them to act in order to clear congested roads.