Nudged by HC, Tamil Nadu promises GPRS in Chennai autos in 4 months

CHENNAI: Nudged by Madras high court and staring at contempt proceedings, Tamil Nadu government on Thursday committed itself to install GPRS instrument in all autorickshaws within 3 to 4 months. GPRS-enabled vehicles will increase safety quotient of passengers, and it could be synced with fool-proof enforcement of fare structure.
When a contempt of court petition, seeking to punish transport department officials for having failed to comply with the orders of the court, came up for hearing before the first bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sathyanarayanan on Thursday, additional advocate-general of Tamil Nadu Mani Shankar informed the court that contract for supply of GPRS instrument had been issued to ELCOT already.
Taking note of the submission that it would normally take about three to four months to complete installation of the system in autorickshaws in Chennai alone, the bench adjourned the matter to December 6.
Once installation in Chennai is complete, it would be taken up for vehicles in the rest of the state, the court was informed.
However, the government is yet to take any decision on the court's other suggestions made in its July 19 orders. The court had taken serious view of traffic violations committed by autorickshaws in the state, and suggested that road rule violation fines must be enhanced to Rs 1,500 for the first time offence itself.
The bench had also suggested appointment of traffic wardens in view of manpower shortage in city traffic police wing, and asked the state government to explore these suggestions before the next date of hearing. The bench had also suggested people lodging complaints should be informed the fate of their complaints by SMS.
It all started with a PIL filed by Coimbatore Consumer Voice chief Logu seeking rationalization of autorickshaw fares in the textile city. Later its scope was extended to cover the whole state. Since, inspite of several rulings, officials had not enforced court orders, Logu filed the present contempt of court petition to punish officials for failure to implement the court's eight-point charter of guidelines, including the one relating to periodic review of fares based on variation of international crude oil prices.