Imphal, September 11: Even though the State Govt has launched many drives against unauthorized Rickshaws plying in the State in the past few months, the numbers of unauthorized rickshaws have shown no signs of decreasing and instead their numbers have increased considerably to about 19,000.Talking to The Sangai Express, an official of the Traffic Police Department informed that the steady increase of unauthorized rickshaws plying in Imphal is one of the main factors for the traffic congestion in Imphal city.

Stating that the regular drive conducted by the Dept against unauthorized Rickshaws is of little use as most of the owners of the unauthorized rickshaws pull out their vehicles during the drive only to put them back in service after the drive is over, the official said that stricter penalty should be imposed on the unauthorized rickshaws.

He further informed that the number of rickshaws registered under the Imphal Municipal Council (IMC) was about 6396 rickshaws but added that the total number of rickshaws plying in the city is much higher than the number of rickshaws registered under the IMC as most of the rickshaw owners are using as many as three different rickshaws under one registered number.

Stating that the police are also facing a lot of difficulties due to the doubling of many registration numbers and unauthorized rickshaw, while dealing with cases robbery by rickshaws drivers, the official said that a proposal for issuing identity cards to the rickshaw drivers is also on the cards to enable the Police Department to detect unauthorized rickshaws easily and also to solve robbery cases.

Even though the Imphal Municipal Authorities have acquired a large number of rickshaw with a new model from Guwahati to replace the existing models, nothing definite has been taken up to introduce the new model the State till today said the official adding that all the newly acquired rickshaws are presently lying idle in the IMC godown.

Mention may be made here that the State Assembly had already passed a resolution for changing the existing model of rickshaws in the State.

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