Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court has banned passengers travelling in Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) from playing music, watching movies or news on mobile phones in speaker mode.
If the passenger continues to use the speaker mode after one warning, the driver or conductor of the bus can ask him or her to deboard.
According to a notification issued by the KSRTC, a Public Interest Litigation had been filed in the Karnataka High Court against causing ‘sound pollution’ on RTC buses. “It has come to our notice that people are playing music, poems, news and cinema loudly (inside the buses). This is causing sound pollution and disturbances to other passengers in the buses and a PIL has been registered in the High Court to restrict sound pollution,” the circular said. Hearing the petition, the court had issued orders to the RTC to restrict passengers from playing music or movies loudly on their phones.
The staff on the bus should appropriately educate the passengers that using the phone on speaker mode would cause disturbance to other passengers and request them to stop doing so. Any passenger who uses speaker mode will be in violation of the Karnataka Motor Vehicle Rules 1989 section 94 (1)[V] which states that if “a person using stage carriage sings or plays upon any musical instrument or operates a transistor radio, the driver or the conductor may require such person to alight from the vehicle,” the notification said.
If the passenger does not heed to the request of the staff, and continues to violate the state Motor Vehicle Rules, he or she would be asked to deboard the bus by either the driver or the conductor. If the passenger refuses to deboard, the bus would not continue its journey and appropriate action would be initiated.
The deboarded passenger would forfeit his ticket fare.
