Cabinet secretary reviews truck strike situation

The cabinet secretary on Saturday met senior officials to review the situation emanating from the nationwide truckers' strike, which entered the sixth day today and showed no signs of ending soon.

The meeting called by KM Chandrasekhar was attended by the secretaries in the ministries of roads and surface transport, defence, railways, information & broadcasting, and petroleum, an official source said. The deputy national security adviser and officers of the Intelligence Bureau were also present.

Various options to deal with the situation were discussed, the source said.

The review meeting came in the wake of the continued stand-off between transporters and the government. Meanwhile, one more state, Madhya Pradesh, invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Act (Esma) against the strikers. Earlier this week, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Goa invoked the act.

The Centre has already announced plans to run 15 to 20 lakh vehicles in the next few days to ensure uninterrupted supply of essential commodities. These would be arranged by impounding trucks and allowing other private vehicles to transport commodities without permit.

The transporters, however, have said they will not negotiate with the government until members of the All-India Motor Transport Congress arrested on Friday are released. "We will intensify our stir. There is no question of calling off our strike. There shall be no talks until the arrested leaders are unconditionally released without any cases against them," an AIMTC official, who did not want to be named, said.