The other poll story running in Kol: Absent cabbies, porters & shut shops

Kolkata: Over half of the city's taxi fleet and nearly all hand rickshaws went off the streets, scores of shops in the Central Business District were shut and wholesale hubs in Burrabazar-Posta and Sealdah struggled to function as Biharis who constitute a majority of cab drivers, rickshaw-pullers and porters left for Bihar on Wednesday or even earlier to vote in the first phase of Assembly election there. Commuting as well as markets will be further affected when those who have to vote in the second phase on Nov 11 leave the city.Kuldip Singh, secretary of Calcutta Taxi Association, said, "A majority of the drivers of yellow taxis and luxury cab drivers enlisted with us have returned to their hometown in Bihar." The association, established in 1936, has around 4,800 enlisted taxis.Krishna Dev Yadav of Picnic Garden, who used to lend 55 hand-rickshaws operating in Gariahat, Lake Market, Kalighat and Bhowanipore, said, "Hardly five of my hand-rickshaws are still functional in south Kolkata now.""This situation is almost similar to Covid when 80% of the city's hand-rickshaw pullers are now in Bihar except those who are from Jharkhand," said Mukhtar Ali, general secretary, All Bengal Rickshaw Union. Most rickshaw pullers who work in the city are from Madhubani, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga and Vaishali districts. App cab and luxury cab drivers are also missing from the city. "Luckily the election is in two phases. We are hopeful some of them will return over the weekend," said Manash Choudhury, working secretary of Kolkata OLA-UBER App Cab Operator and Drivers Union CITU.The elections in Bihar have also sparked a crisis of mutias or porters who work in the city's wholesale and retail markets. At Koley Market, Sealdah, there were hardly any porters available to unload vegetables on Thursday. "We are now depending on a few left mutias belonging to Odisha," said Sanjay Kumar Dey, who has a wholesale hardware materials shop in Burrabazar.Many retail shops run by migrants from Bihar have also downed shutters. Prem Narayan Pandey, an 80-year-old popular pice hotel operator on S N Banerjee Road, said his business has dropped to 25%. "There is a rumour spreading that not casting a vote this time will lead to cancellation of name and there is a rush of returning back to Bihar which I never witnessed in the last 30 years," he said. "I am afraid of losing contracts during the ongoing marriage season because of the lack of expert upholsterers (mattress makers) as most of them are from Bihar," said Rajesh Bajpayee, a bedding store owner at Grant Street.