Commuters in Mumbai faced a harrowing time as auto-rickshaws and taxis drivers attached with 'Swabhiman Union' began a day-long strike in the metro city on Monday morning to press for their demands.
The 'Swabhiman Union' claims it has 18,000 auto rickshaw owners and 12,000 taxi owners as its members.
"The day long strike which will end at 5 pm, is only an alarm to the state government and if our demands are not met, then the union would be forced to launch an intensive agitation," said K K Tiwari, Mumbai President of Swabhiman Union.
Earlier, it had dashed off a letter to Maharashtra transport commissioner with a copy to state transport minister Diwakar Raote and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on June 9, demanding to ban the entry of mobile application driven cabs such as Uber, Ola, Meru Plus etc.
The contention of the striking taxi drivers is that it is ‘illegal for cab aggregators to ply in Mumbai’ and it is because of Ola and Uber, drivers of the iconic black-yellow taxis of Mumbai do not get long-distance customers.
The Union in the said letter had threatened to go on a strike from June 15 if their their demands were not met.
"We have even got the support from rickshaw and taxi owners who are not our members, because we have raised issues that cater to their demand too," Tiwari said.
In the letter given to the transport commissioner, Tiwari claimed that an RTI application has found that many of the private operators do not have relevant permissions. "The strike call is to demand a ban on them," he said.
"Black and yellow taxis have been the identity of Mumbai for generations. We will not allow them to disappear because of illegal private cabs...," Nitesh Rane tweeted.
Interestingly, the largest union of taxi owners in the city led by A L Quadros has not supported this strike.
The largest auto union in the city led by Shashank Rao has said it will go on a strike from June 17.
Photograph: Vivek Prakash/Reuters