Covid-19: Assam adopts odd-even scheme to limit vehicles of 'essential services'

The Guwahati Police on Friday announced to implement an odd-even rule for all vehicles involved in essential services for three days to further reduce traffic movement on the city roads.

The system, which was first implemented in Delhi to tackle air pollution by limiting the number of cars as per the last digit of their registration number, came into force after vehicles with stickers saying "essential services" clogged roads in some areas of the city.

"Even if the vehicles carry permissions, only those with registrations ending with an even number will be allowed to ply on roads today," Guwahati Police Commissioner Munna Prasad Gupta said.

Likewise, odd-numbered vehicles tomorrow and even numbers on Sunday will be allowed on the roads, he said.

"However, ambulances, doctors, health workers, media, police, on-duty government servants, water vehicles, full-body load carrying trucks, vehicles carrying LPG cylinders, refinery workers, electricity department and phone services have been exempted from this order," Gupta informed.

The police commissioner further said that all vegetable and milk vans irrespective of their number plates are allowed to enter the city before 9 am.

"These restrictions will be in place till Sunday. The main reason is we want to save the people from coronavirus outbreak," he said.

Huge traffic was witnessed at Ganeshguri locality of the city on Thursday with most of the vehicles carrying stickers of essential services.

Gupta informed that the city police have seized 2,977 vehicles in Guwahati and imposed fines of ₹11,91,500 since the beginning of the lockdown.

"We have also registered more than 1,200 non-FIR cases against the violators. Besides, we have registered some cases under IPC and arrested 90 people for violation of the lockdown," he added.

Markets, offices and other installations were mostly closed and vehicles were off the road across Assam on Friday, the 17th day of the nationwide lockdown imposed to check the spread of the coronavirus.

However, at many places people defied the lockdown and ventured out of their homes, prompting the police to use force. At several places, police distributed rice, vegetables, medicines and other essentials among the needy people.