While auto-rickshaw drivers protesting against non-availability of LPG cylinders put up road blocks at seven crossings across the city, Trinamool supporters protesting against alleged atrocities meted out on their supporters by CPM workers blocked roads at 31 crossings during the day.

The road blockades caused huge traffic jams on all the major roads in the city.

State chief secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti will, meanwhile, meet the representatives of oil companies on Wednesday at the Writers’ Buildings to sort out the shortage of LPG cylinders that are used in auto-rickshaws.

In Kolkata, around 15,000 auto-rickshaws ply on roads. As many as 500 auto-rickshaw drivers today parked their vehicles on the middle of roads as part of the blockade.

“There is an acute shortage of LPG filling stations and they are scattered around the city. Sometimes there are long queues outside the filling stations. At present, there are 17 filling stations in the city and we want 50 such centres because only then the problem can be solved,” Sobhondeb Chattopadhyay, Trinamool Congress MLA and an auto-rickshaw union leader, told The Indian Express.

The government too admitted that the resentment of the auto-rickshaw drivers was fully justified. “Their complaints are genuine but they cannot take recourse to such drastic action like blocking roads. We have asked the 17 LPG distribution centres in the city to remain open 24 hours a day. We have also asked the oil companies to set up 20 such centres across the city and they said they would do it by March,” Transport Minister Ranjit Kundu said today.