Erring auto drivers to face action

​Hyderabad: The officials of the Legal Metrology and Hyderabad Traffic police are set to crack a whip on erring autorickshaws being operated with tempered meters and looting the commuters.

“Over acceleration, excessive honking, jamming on brakes time and again and using indicators unnecessarily are some of sings that point to “tampered metre,” according to officials of the Legal Metrology.

The Legal Metrology Department held a programme on Saturday for the Traffic Police to make the latter aware of the methods being adopted by autorickshaw operators to loot the public. The officials said some autorickshaw drivers were using capacitors and condensers to tamper the digital meters.

Speaking at the programme, Legal Metrology Deputy Controller Vimal Babu said several techniques were being adopted to tamper the digital meters. There was a spurt in incidence of tampering after digital meters were installed on autorickshaws.

The Deputy Controller said attaching double magnet to the metre, altering programme in the chip in the meter, using a capacitor or condenser were the techniques adopted by the errant drivers to see that the meter shows higher than normal fare.

“The double magnet technique will increase the fare by 5 per cent, capacitor up to 30 per cent and altering the programme can increase the fare by 100 per cent,” he said.

Demonstrating the use of tampered meter, Legal Metrology District Inspector Rama Krishna said after installing the magnets or capacitors, an extra wire would be connected to the meter gauge at the rear of the autorickshaw (near engine). It would give extra pulse to the meter to increase the reading, he said.