Despite having imposed 'lockdown-like' restrictions, traffic snarls at entry and exit points of Mumbai city are seen during peak hours. In order to limit vehicular traffic on roads and to allow vehicles related to essential services with more ease, the Mumbai Police has introduced colour-coded stickers.
In a video, Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale informed that a self-sticking colour-coded policy will be implemented in three colours- red, green and yellow. A red sticker will be used for vehicles belonging to doctors, medical staff, and transportation of essential medical supplies; green for vehicles carrying consumable items (fruits, vegetables, dairy products etc) and yellow for essential services including the movement of officials from the government, telephone department, electricity department and the media.
"Now we are limiting vehicle flow on roads in accordance with the government's restrictions. This has resulted in traffic jams and doctors, nurses, medical staff, transport of medical equipment are getting trapped. As a solution to this, we are starting with a policy of self-sticking stickers," Nagrale said.
Amid this, a message is going viral on WhatsApp. According to the message, the Mumbai police has instructed petrol pumps to sell fuel only to vehicles that have colour-coded stickers. The message further asked Mumbaikars to get their fuel tanks filled up as petrol pumps won't provide fuel to those not having colour-coded stickers.
"Pls get your car filled with fuel as from tomorrow the pumps have been instructed by the police to give fuel only to those cars who have the red green or yellow stickers," reads the WhatsApp message.
The Free Press Journal then fact-checked the viral message and found it fake. We contacted the Mumbai Police spokesperson and he has confirmed that no such instruction has been given to the petrol pump owners.