Wedding Season Blues: Voters and brides compete for taxis in Uttarakhand
Elections in Uttarakhand, coinciding with the peak wedding season, have resulted in a surge in demand for buses and cabs across the state. Families who had made preparations for weddings say they are struggling for vehicles for their baraats (wedding processions) since a large number of taxis and buses have been diverted for election duty.
According to information made available by the transport department, a total of 12,395 vehicles, including 3,653 buses and 7,161 private taxis and cabs, have been acquired by state authorities for election duty. This has led to vehicle bookings for weddings being cancelled abruptly. All five Lok Sabha constituencies in the state will go to the hustings in the first of the seven-phase polls on April 19.
This year, peak wedding season has also arrived around this time with April 18, just a day before the polls, being considered the most auspicious day of the season to get married. Priests say that the wedding season gains momentum after Baisakhi on April 13, and extends until April 24.
«We have a wedding in the family on April 18 and the vehicles we had booked more than a month back are no longer available. We have had to make alternate arrangements at short notice. None of the taxi services we know have any available vehicles for those dates. We are in a dilemma what to do,» Janardhan Singh, a Dehradun resident, said in TOI report.
N P Singh, who runs Sanjeevni Travels, a prominent city-based cab operator, said, «Vehicles from almost all transport agencies have been engaged for
