By IANS,
Bhopal : Transporters in Madhya Pradesh Tuesday called off their two-day-old strike following Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s assurance that the government would look into their demands sympathetically.
“The strike has been called off following the chief minister’s assurance. We hope he would honour his commitment or else we would again resort to agitation after a month,” Madhya Pradesh Contract Bus Owners’ Association president Shyamsundar Sharma told IANS.
More than 15,000 buses and 500 taxis in the state had stopped plying Sunday as private bus operators began their strike to press their demands including a 50 percent hike in fares and doing away with a three-tier taxation system.
Their demands included formation of a fare board, permanent permits for contract buses, reducing royalty of buses on contract to 50 paise per km and lowering value added tax (VAT) on diesel by 8 percent.
A delegation of the Bus Operators Association met Chouhan after deliberations with the state’s Transport Minister Himmat Kothari.
Chouhan assured them that a decision to increase the fares would be taken in a month and their taxation and permit problems would also be solved.