SHILLONG, Sep 1: Highlighting the purported difficulties faced at various weighbridges along NH-6 and NH-40E, truckers, suppliers, exporters, traders and transporters’ associations under the umbrella of a joint action committee (JAC) have urged Chief Minister Conrad Sangma to shut down such ‘illegal’ weighbridges located on the highways at the earliest.
In a representation submitted to the chief minister, the JAC alleged that these stakeholders are coerced to pay huge sum of money at the weighbridges.
“Every time we had to pass through these weighbridges, we were forced to shed a huge sum of money which is otherwise meant for our survival during the course of our work. At times we had to stay hungry for few days as we used to run out of money because of these weighbridges,” the JAC alleged.
It maintained that these weighbridges are declared illegal by the Centre, which is “totally against the existence of such illegal weighbridges” on the aforementioned national highways.
According to the JAC, the National Highway Act does not empower the officers of the Transport department in the state to meddle with the matters of national highways and any structure built along the highway without the approval of the competent authority, i.e. the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, will be deemed to be illegal and not permissible as per law.
“The Act which the state made under the Motor Vehicles Act to cover up these illegal weighbridges is not valid at all as the highways are covered by the National Highway Act and the power to enforce the Act is with the central government and not with the state of Meghalaya,” the JAC added.
The JAC requested the chief minister to not “force them to be part of these illegalities by asking them to pay to these illegal weighbridges as this totally goes against the law and the spirit of the Constitution”.
Nonetheless, following the uproar over illegal weighbridges raked up by Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, recently, Meghalaya Transport Minister Sniawbhalang Dhar had claimed that all weighbridges in Meghalaya are legal.
Gadkari, however, had stated that several weighbridges operated by the Meghalaya government on National Highway 6 were illegal.
“This is not a new thing. All weighbridges in Meghalaya are legal because they have been notified under a weighbridge policy,” the Transport minister had said while referring to the Meghalaya Weighbridge Policy, 2018.
