Jantar Mantar witnessed a massive protest action on 16 November 2007 when about 7,000 road transport employees sat on dharna, demanding a progressive transport policy promulgation by the Government of India.

Transport workers, across the country, launched a continuous struggle in the recent past, protesting against privatisation, repression and victimisation, besides demanding for the strengthening of the public sector transport system for the benefit of the common public.

The protesting workers were addressed by the leaders of The National Federation of Indian Road Transport Workers (NFIRTW), affiliated to AITUC. M.L. Yadav, General Secretary  of NFIRTW announced that the experts in the union had prepared an alternative national Road Transport Policy, which would be submitted to the union minister of transport T.R. Balu.

Com. H. Mahadevan, Dy. General Secretary, in his address stated that, “the central and state governments of India follow the same `privatisation` policy dictated by the World Bank, IMF and WTO. In an International Conference in Brazil, organised by the World Federation of Trade Unions, transport workers of the world are going to meet to decide strategies to fight against these policies.” G.L. Dhar, Secretary of AITUC, hailed the transport workers unity and united struggles.

Later, a national-level delegation, led by Com. Gurudas Dasgupta, along with the leadership of the federation, met T.R. Baalu, and presented him a memorandum. Besides the transport policy document, the memorandum submitted to the minister had six other demands. These included the setting up of a National Development Finance Corporation to offer soft loans to the State Transport Undertakings (STUs) as per requirement; roads should be strengthened and improved with timely and adequate maintenance; excise duty on diesel supplied to STUs and the excise duty on bus chassis, etc., must be done away with; medical facilities to those road transport workers in the public and the private sectors, who are deprived of it, be provided through the ESI scheme, irrespective of the number of workers deployed, if it is available. In case of non-availability of the ESI scheme, the medical facility to such road transport workers be provided by the employer or the central or state governments; social security schemes for all road transport workers in public and private sectors must be introduced by the central and state governments; trade union and democratic rights of workers must be protected in the public and private sector road transport industry.

The representatives demanded that NFIRTW should be called for the 1 December meeting convened by Minister to discuss the National Transport Policy.