Ghaziabad: Transport department revokes decision to acquire private cars for polls

Ghaziabad: Days after local residents started crying foul, the regional transport department officials have decided to rollback their decision to acquire private cars/SUVs for the purpose of election-related duties in Ghaziabad.
Last week, the transport department had sent a list of about 700-800 vehicles having up to seven-seater capacity, to the Ghaziabad administration.
The move drew a lot of resentment by private car owners to see for the first time that their private vehicles were being sought in such a manner. HT on April 14 published a report highlighting the issue and responses from car owners.
“Since there is resentment against the move, we have decided to exempt private cars from the process of acquisition for the election duties. Now, we will acquire only such light vehicles that are registered in the name of travel agencies or registered as taxis or used for commercial operations. No private vehicles/cars will be acquired, not even those registered in the name of private firms/companies,” said additional regional transport officer (ARTO) (enforcement) Ghaziabad, KD Singh.
He said that the latest decision was taken as the transport department was receiving a lot of calls from car owners and they were opposing the move.
“Some said that they have marriage in the family while others said that they have ailing family member while others said that they do not have the facility of a driver,” the officer said.
“To ease things, we decided to exempt private cars. We need about 750 of these for election duties and these were demanded by the administration and the police department,” he added.
On April 13, Rahul Srivastava, additional RTO, told HT that there was a requirement of about 4,300 vehicles for carrying out election duties.
The list of vehicles included private vehicles like buses, trucks, loaders, etc. along with 700-800 light vehicles like Bolero, Scorpio, Ertiga, among others.
The sources in the transport department had also said that the list of private cars included the ones which were registered in the last two to three years.
“The decision to rollback the previous order is a welcome step. But in the past one week, people served notices for the acquisition of their private cars, faced a lot of harassment. They were given repeated calls by the local police. Many had to run a number of times to the transport department office with their pleas,” said Vikrant Sharma, a resident of Raj Nagar Extension and lawyer at Ghaziabad court.
“The decision was intended to provide better cars to officials going on election duty but at what cost?” he asked.