Chennai cops to colour stamp autorickshaws

Chennai: Soon, you can look for autorickshaws with stickers of red-blue colour combination, a stamp from the city police, to guarantee their integrity.

Chennai city police, in an effort to help the people to identify the good, bad and ugly among the nearly 1 lakh autorickshaws in the city, will be issuing stickers to them depending on remarks from the police and RTO against each one of them.

“In the initial stage, we will issue stickers of red-blue combination to autorickshaws who have clean record. Those autorickshaws who have no black mark against them from the police department and regional transport office will get these stickers. It is an indication to commuters that the vehicles have a clean history and they have been obeying rules,” a senior police officer informed.

The police had decided to come up with the stickers after the autorickshaw drivers started complaining that the police had been harassing them in the name of new auto fare and meters.

“These stickers will help the commuters identify decent autorickshaws and drivers. This will also help the police as they don’t have to conduct repeated checks on the same vehicles,” a senior officer said. The police estimate that at least 20,000 autorickshaws of the 1 lakh running in the city would be eligible for the red-blue stickers.

It does not mean that autorickshaws without the stickers are bad.

“Other autorickshaws will also get another colour sticker if we have not received any complaints from the commuters against them on using the new auto fare meter,” the officer added.

The police estimate that only 60 to 70 per cent autorickshaws in the city use the meters that were recently introduced.