Kolkata: Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here on Tuesday that his Government was keen on removing hand-pulled rickshaws from Kolkata as "the practice should not be allowed on humanitarian grounds."

However, he has reportedly agreed to meet representatives of unions of rickshaw pullers before pursuing the matter.

Mr. Bhattacharjee was speaking at a meeting of the select committee of the West Bengal Assembly to which a Bill aimed at removing the rickshaws was referred to by Assembly Speaker H.A. Halim last month. The Bill was moved by the Chief Minister.

The Calcutta Hackney-Carriage (Amendment) Bill, 2006 states that the amendment to the earlier legislation was necessary "so as to eradicate the inhuman practice of plying man-drawn rickshaws and man-carried palanquins as vehicles of public conveyance and to ease, to some extent, traffic congestion caused by such slow moving vehicles on the busy streets."

Mr. Bhattacharjee has asserted that hand-pulled rickshaws are an "inhuman" mode of transport "seen in no other city of the world." There are nearly 5,000 such licensed rickshaws in the city and the number of rickshaw-pullers is about 20,000.

Trinamool Congress representative Partha Chatterjee said the Chief Minister agreed to a suggestion that he meet representatives of the rickshaw-puller unions. After meeting them, he would convene another meeting of the select committee and submit a detailed proposal of the Government's plans on removing the rickshaws.

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