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Talks fail, truckers stick to indefinite strike plan

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: After the last minute talks ended in a deadlock, truck operators announced that they were going ahead with their indefinite country-wide strike from Tuesday midnight to press their demand for abolition of toll tax besides rationalisation of duty on diesel.

“We are going on an indefinite strike from midnight tonight. All the transporters will down their shutters and there will be no movement of goods on the roads till our demands are met by the government,” representatives of the All India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC) said as they came out of the meeting with the government officials at Transport Bhawan on Tuesday evening and reported failure of the talks.

The apex body of truckers, which claims the support of all state transporters’ association with a combined fleet size of 48,00,000 trucks, said their trucks would start going off the road in response to the call given by it and its impact would be felt by Wednesday evening.

The Road Transport Secretary Bharm Dutt and representatives of the Finance and the Petroleum Ministries also participated in the talks. The truckers said the talks failed since the government side was not prepared to make any commitment.

However, they indicated that they were open to discussions and would resume talks as and when invited.

“We want the ad valorem duty on diesel to be replaced with fixed rate of duty on per litre of the fuel,” AIMTC President Charan Singh Lohara said while addressing a Truckers rally at Jantar Mantar earlier in the day.

He alleged that the government was cashing in on the international crisis on crude oil prices many-fold and forcing the truckers to buy premium diesel at higher and unregulated prices.

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