DC directs to slash bus fare
Transport department public contact meeting
Mangaluru, July 24: Taking exception to the unilateral decision of the Dakshina Kannada District Bus Owners Association to increase the bus fare without taking permission from the District Transport Authority, Deputy Commissioner and Authority Chairman Sasikanth Senthil directed the association to slash the bus fare increased by it.
Responding to the public grievances at a public contact meeting held at the Transport Department here on Tuesday, Transport department deputy commissioner (incharge) John Miskith said that the Bus Owners Association had increased the bus fare without getting the permission from the District Transport Authority and listening to the public opinion and gave an advertisement in the newspapers in last April. They were collecting more fare from the passengers. As he has received public complaint against this practice, it was brought to the notice of the Authority Chairman. Following this, the Chairman had served a notice to the Association. Against this, the association had appealed to the State Transport Authority which sought clarification from the district authority. In view of this, the district Authority has cancelled the decision taken by the association unilaterally and instructed the association that fare hike or decrease should be discussed in the Authority meeting and decided. The association was also asked to respond to the notice within three days. If the order was not honoured, the Authority would take action against the Association, he said. .
Some of the participants Jerald Towers Kadri, Dinesh Shetty, Naizil Albukark and others raised the issue of harsh horn and tickets were also not issuing. If asked, the bus operators give reasons. Some time, they miss the regular routes and run the buses, they said demanding action.
But Misquith assured of taking action if particular route and bus names were given.
Some buses which come from other places were given permission till Kottara and Infosys and it should be extended to Kottara Chowki. If the buses stopped at Kottara- Infosys, it would cause inconvenience to the passengers, said Chandramohan.
Cancel seats reserved for women
Social worker BS Hasanabba said that the authority should cancel reservation of seats for women in buses, because, even if the seats were vacant, women occupy the seats of men. Moreover, the women who sat on the seats reserved for senior citizens would respond indifferently when they were asked to shift to their seats. Bus conductors should insist the women to sit in their reserved seats. If not, the reservation of seats for women passengers should be cancelled, he demanded.
Kannada board demanded
Majority of the vehicles including buses have been using English boards. So, the owners of the vehicles should be directed to write in Kannada, said GK Bhat.
John Misquith said that such problems were there because of shortage of sufficient staff in the department. The department was trying to solve majority of the problems, he said.
Appreciating his work, Bhat said that after taking over the charge, he was working for the people. But previous officials were behaving like the agents of the private bus owners. You were against to such culture. So, take stringent action against the bus staff which violate norms, he demanded.
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Not surprised EC gave itself clean chit: Cong slams poll panel on Haryana complaints
Warns ECI of legal action over 'condescending' tone
New Delhi, Nov 1: The Congress on Friday hit out at the Election Commission after it rejected allegations of "irregularities" in Haryana assembly polls, saying if the poll panel's goal is to "strip itself of the last vestiges of neutrality", then it is doing a "remarkable job" at creating that impression.
The opposition party claimed that the EC's reply was written in a tone that is condescending and warned that if the poll panel persists with such language then it would have no choice but to seek legal recourse for getting such remarks expunged.
The Congress's response came days after the EC rejected allegations levelled by it over "irregularities" in assembly polls, saying the party was raising "the smoke of a generic doubt" about the credibility of an entire electoral outcome as done in the past.
The Congress said it is not surprised that the ECI has examined its complaints and "given itself a clean chit". The answer given to the question of the machines' fluctuating batteries seeks to confuse rather than clarify, it said.
"At any rate, the ECI reply is nothing more than a standard and generic set of bullets on how the machines function rather than a specific clarification on specific complaints. In short, while our complaints were specific the ECI response is generic and focused on diminishing the complaints and the petitioners," the Congress said.
In its letter to the EC signed by nine senior Congress leaders, including general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh, the party said, "We have carefully studied your response to our complaints. Not surprisingly, the ECI has given a clean chit to itself. We would normally have let it be at that. However, the tone and tenor of the ECI's response, the language used, and the allegations made against the INC compel us to submit the counter-response."
The Congress letter said that if the Commission grants a recognised national party a hearing or examines issues raised by them in good faith it is not an 'exception' or 'indulgence' but it is the performance of a duty required to be done.
"If the Commission is refusing to grant us a hearing or refusing to engage on certain complaints (which it has done in the past) then the law allows recourse to the higher courts' extraordinary jurisdiction to compel the ECI to discharge this function (as happened in 2019)," the letter said.
The Congress leaders, who had petitioned the EC alleging irregularities in the polls, said every reply from the EC now "seems to be laced with ad-hominem attacks" on either individual leaders or the party itself.
"The ECI's reply are written in a tone that is condescending. If the current ECI's goal is to strip itself of the last vestiges of neutrality, then it is doing a remarkable job at creating that impression," the party said in its letter to the EC.
"Judges who write decisions do not attack or demonise the party raising the issues. However, if the ECI persists then we shall have no choice but to seek legal recourse to expunge such remarks," said the letter signed by Ramesh, K C Venugopal, Ashok Gehlot, Bhupinder Hooda, Ajay Maken, Abhishek Singhvi, Uday Bhan, Partap Bajwa and Pawan Khera.
They also said that the "pattern" sought to be identified by the ECI in its reply is "disingenuous" as sometimes acting on complaints immediately is the key.
"If they are not redressed on the ground then they become redundant. And then the only remedy available is an Election Petition which is a lengthy process taking years to resolve. Thus, we approach the ECI with whatever information we have, and the ECI with the vast resources at its command, examines and reviews this information to see if the same is correct. Many times, the ECI has found our information to be correct. Other times, not so. But we do not name and shame the ECI for those moments after the Election is over," they said.
The Congress said if they were "bad faith actors", then they would never engage with the ECI to begin with. "We would focus on naming and shaming the Commission with examples from the ECI's own recent history which do not shroud it with glory," it said, adding that they would have never engaged in that case.
The Congress said it has sent over a hundred complaints against the prime minister and home minister, but "the ECI has taken action in precisely zero complaints, while calling our party president and former party president to account for their actions/speeches".
"We would point out how the ECI never published a dissent note, actively suppressing it instead, by a former Commissioner in this regard. We would point out that the ECI has almost always fought any move for transparency and increase in VVPAT verification numbers, with the same having to be ordered by the Supreme Court. We challenge the ECI to fact check the above since it finds the INC's misgivings to be based on phantoms," the Congress said.
In a strongly-worded letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, the poll panel had said such "frivolous and unfounded" doubts have the potential of creating "turbulence" when crucial steps like polling and counting are in live play, a time when both public and political parties' anxiousness is peaking.
The BJP retained power in Haryana winning 48 of the 90 seats in the October 5 assembly polls.
