The notoriety of Auto Mafia in Tamil Nadu (particularly Greater Chennai City and Suburban) need to be controlled by the State Transport Department.

  1. A significant number of Autos are not still having meters. Those with meters too refuse to ply by them and/or prefer pre-bargained high rates.
  2. A variant of the Hire Autos called Share Autos are known to overload passengers particularly during peak hours in most parts of the city. This is particularly dangerous for every road user in that stretch.
  3. The Autos do not seem to be abiding by any Road Rules.
    1. They pull over at any point sighting a potential ride mindless of the vehicles behind them.
    2. Often the autos are sighted parked obstructive way near bus stops/terminals etc.
    3. A significant amount of Wrong-side driving is also from the autos
  4. Even the autos that are attached with aggregation service providers like Ola, Uber are violating several Motor Carriage Acts and Platform
    1. Refusing non-cash (digital) payments and insisting on Cash
    2. Asking more cash than what is shown on the app
    3. Not responding and/or delaying pickup location forcing to cancel and/or canceling after the alloted time to derive the cancelation fee benefits from the passengers.
    4. Asking or threatening the passengers to cancel the request and take the ride with them offline
    5. The cab aggregators enforcement seems to be minimal and hence state transport department needs to intervene in a more stringent disciplinary enforcements on erring auto-drivers (regardless of their political affiliations whatsoever)

Note: The petition is being filed with email address/mobile number alone because there is a potential limitation in CM Helpline (Home, Prohibition and Excise Sector) that if the address is given , redressal of the public grievance which applies pan-State is overlooked and only the jurisdictional limit is applied.

A copy of the above request has been sent to the office of Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for their kind attention.