NOVEMBER 19: The Bombay High Court today took strong exception to the recent strike of the taximen in the city against the transport commissioner's drive against polluting vehicles. ``We would like you to impress to your clients that once the matter is in court, we will not tolerate the pressure tactics of a strike,'' a stern Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal told the counsel for the Bombay Taximens Union today.``Do not force our hand to make an order that may have the consequence that such threats of strike be declared illegal,'' the Chief Justice noted.The bench of the Chief Justice and Justice Ranjana Desai, who were deliberating on further steps to be taken to check pollution following a public interest petition filed by the Smoke Affected Residents Forum (SARF), also directed the state government to file an affidavit on the directive of the chief minister to the transport commissioner to call off the drive.The transport commissioner has also been directed to file an affidavit on the statistics and reports obtained by him based on which his office had decided to start the anti pollution drive with the taxis.In fact, at the hearing today, advocate for the petitioners, M R Pillai, as did most of the counsels for the 24 respondents chorused that taximen could not be allowed to hit the streets when the transport commissioner was only following the directions of the high court in the matter. The high court has already passed interim orders on the petition declaring that all private cars will have to conform to Euro I norms by January 2000 and Euro II by January 2001.``We could if we want file contempt proceedings against them. After all, they are aware of the court case, they have been impleaded in it,'' said Pillai. Senior counsel Janak Dwarkadas too added that the transport commissioner V M Lal needed a pat on his back and it was ``outside sources'' that were interfering with his work. ``We would like an interim order that such strikes be called illegal,'' he stated.Counsel for the Bombay Taximens Union - behind whom, the general secretary of the union, A N Quadros was standing - argued that poor taxi drivers who work hard for a livelihood are being ``targetted''. He argued that most of the 20,000 diesel taxis out of the total 55,000 taxis in Mumbai had obtained fitness certificates as they are directed to do every year and wondered why only taxis and not private cars were being asked to undergo another test. The Chief Justice pointed out that ``nobody wants to snatch away the taxi drivers' livelihood'' and added that if the union were so confident, there should be no problem in undergoing another test.The counsel for the union however argued that taximen were agreeable to switch to CNG, but it is the state government that should be directed to open more CNG filling stations.Meanwhile, following the queries raised by the high court in its earlier order whereby it had sought if certain steps could be taken against erring PUC centres, the state has filed a detailed affidavit pointing out to the lacunae. According to the affidavit filed by the deputy transport commissioner Satish Sahasrabuddhe, it would be difficult to establish that a PUC certificate was fake since the PUC centre could claim that when the certificate was given the vehicle was proper and the defect may have occured only after that.He welcomed the court's suggestion that entries should be made in registers if the vehicle is found to be outside pollution norms, as is already being done. He also added that a sticker on a polluting vehicle was possible though the modalities of ``ensuring that such a sticker is not removed had to be examined in detail''.The officer has also welcomed the court's suggestion that a polluting vehicle's driver's license should be endorsed and would check him from driving such a vehicle. He however cautioned against duplicate licenses and stated that ``once computerisation and inter-connecting of licensing authorities is established,'' such duplicate licensing could be checked.
