No licence, no fear: TVK MLA drove a packed government bus at a scheme launch — probe ordered

A clip of barely half a minute has done what transport department enforcement squads rarely manage: it has put a lawmaker's driving licence under the scanner. A video that went viral on social media this week showed a TVK legislator, identified in reports as Mr. Kumar, at the wheel of a government bus carrying around 30 commuters. Transport authorities have now ordered a probe into whether the MLA held a valid licence to drive the bus — and if he did not, who cleared the stunt. The setting makes the violation worse, not excusable. The MLA took the wheel during the launch of the state government's expanded 'Vettri Payanam Thittam' — the free-bus-travel scheme whose name is borrowed from the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam itself. On Gandhi Jayanti, Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay personally launched the expanded scheme in Chennai: he travelled on a bus, handed out free tickets to women passengers and played conductor for the cameras, while college students on board shared chocolates with him. The expansion extends free travel for women and transgender people to express, deluxe, mofussil ordinary and certain ghat services — a benefit the government says will reach about 84.32 lakh women every day on 12,695 buses run by the seven state transport corporations, with no income ceiling and no cap on the number of trips a beneficiary can make. A scheme launch is choreography, and everyone understands that. But there is a line between choreography and illegality, and a government bus full of commuters — real people with real families — is where that line is drawn. Under the Motor Vehicles Act, driving a heavy passenger vehicle without the proper licence is an offence that ordinary citizens are prosecuted and fined for. The probe must answer a simple question: would an ordinary driver who did the same thing have been let off with a smile? If not, the MLA should not be either. Then there is the question of the thirty commuters on that bus. A government bus is public property carrying public lives. Putting an unlicensed driver at its wheel — for the cameras, for the celebration — gambled with those lives. Had anything gone wrong, the government that claims to serve women commuters would have had to explain why it endangered them on the very first day of a scheme meant for their benefit. The ruling party came to power promising a different kind of politics — ordinary people, not entitled politicians. Ordinary people, though, get challans. They get prosecuted. The least this probe can deliver is the same treatment: the law applies at the wheel, and it applies to everyone on board — including the man in the driver's seat.