Mumbai: MNS threatens taxi drivers, says 'behave or you'll have to deal with us'

They barely managed to win a seat in the Maharashtra Assembly but the Raj Thackeray-led MNS is in no mood to give up its arm-twisting tactics. Self-assuming the role of the guardians of Mumbai’s commuters, the MNS has now decided to straighten up taxi drivers who refuse to abide by traffic rules.

According to this report in The Indian Express, posters that have come up along the Western Expressway in Mumbai have the following message: “Taxi chalakanno yaad raakha! Mujori karaal tar gaath aamchyashi aahe (taxi drivers, remember. If you do not behave, you will have to deal with us)”.

The posters have come up at Kherwada, Bandra East where construction work is currently on to build a new flyover and as a consequence of which that stretch of the expressway is currently experiencing traffic jams.

However, Mumbai Police claim they have been taking action against taxi drivers who have been illegally stopping along the highway.

Mumbai Traffic Police Senior Inspector SD Hanchate told The Indian Express:  “People travelling by public transport towards south Mumbai come till the Kherwadi junction by auto-rickshaw and then take taxis to go further. For this reason, taxi drivers park their vehicles at the junction, looking for such fares. We have been penalising them whenever we see them parked on the highway, and this action has been going on for a long time. We step it up whenever we see taxis in large numbers. It is not as if we have suddenly woken up to the issue.”

The approach by MNS, though, is not new. Their hardline attitude towards taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers has often been that of threats and violence, mainly because a large part of those behind the wheels are non-Maharashtrians, hailing from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Since 2008,  and then once again in 2010 , when it violently targetted migrants taxi drivers in the city, the last few years have seen almost no attacks by the political party except for threats by Raj. Now that they have politically failed, is this another attempt by the party to bring the Marathi manoos agenda back?