Ranjani Madhavan By Express News Service BENGALURU: Loca Rides, a four-month-old car pool start-up that aims to provide last-mile connectivity near Metro and railway stations is facing opposition from local auto drivers in Indiranagar. The vehicles are available in a 4 to 5km radius of stations. The company alleges that two of their cars were damaged by auto drivers. In fact, in one of the incidents, the driver had passengers in the cab when a group of auto drivers kicked the vehicles and scratched the windshield with keys. The firm also claims that their drivers had been threatened last month too and they were forced to move their pick-up points. “We have around 140 pick-up and drop-off points in Indiranagar. Since our services are cheaper, the auto drivers are probably facing a drop in their business near the Metro station. On August 8, they first disrupted our service by blocking the entire road adjacent to the Metro and were led by a group called Ambedkar Sene, which claims to own the auto stand near the Metro. They prevented out drivers from taking passengers, physically blocked access to cars and threatened to damage them,” said Gautam Patil, founder of Loca. Local drivers had to move the pick-up point, he said. Patil later registered an NCR (Non-cognisable report) on the same day at Indiranagar police station. “On September 9, 30-40 people cornered two cars and physically damaged the cars by kicking and scratching the wind shield with keys. They threatened further damage if the vehicles came near the pick-up point again. The police asked us to move once again and we complained. The next day, auto drivers threatened our drivers once again when passengers were present,” Patil said. In all the above instances, Patil said they had to shut down operations for a few hours and suffer losses. While the police inspector was not reachable for comments on the issue, DCP East, Rahul Kumar said the police will attend to the matter. He, however, did not confirm what action would be taken or if an FIR would be registered.

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