India: Truck drivers across Uttar Pradesh will go on an indefinite strike starting from January 9, announced the UP Truck Operator Association on Saturday. The strike is to protest against the stringent laws for hit-and-run cases under the new Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS).
Dhirendra Tiwari, secretary of the union, speaking to NewsClick, said, “The Government of India has made its stand clear regarding the law that no changes will be made in this law. The definition of hit-and-run given by the government in the judicial code is contained in sub-section (2) of section 166 of the Act.”
According to Tiwari, if this law is implemented, then all types of drivers, including common people, whether two-wheeler or four-wheeler driver or taxi, tempo, truck, trailer or tanker, will all be eligible for the same punishment under hit-and-run cases.
He said that if any kind of incident happens on the road, it is an accident and not a murder. In this new law, a provision has been made to treat the accident as murder and take action. This is an injustice to both transport and private vehicle drivers. Since this law is non-bailable, it will be misused. Police on the road will harass drivers by implicating them in fake cases.
The driver union leaders argued that if any accident occurs, the police will first arrest the person concerned and send them to jail, and if there is even the slightest bias in the investigation, their whole family will be devastated. A driver doing a job worth Rs 10,000 will have to spend ten years behind bars or pay a fine of Rs 7 lakh. This will affect their entire family.
The union leader said that all truck drivers in the state will support the strike and keep their vehicles off-road. Apart from truck unions, bus unions, taxi travel unions, tankers associations and transport unions will join the strike.
