Bengaluru: Was harassed for visiting RTO in shorts, says techie

BENGALURU: A 32-year-old techie who went to the Regional Transport Office at Jnanabharathi on Tuesday to enquire about driving licence was reportedly harassed for wearing shorts.
“I was harassed by an RTO official because I went to the RTO office in shorts. The guy said he wouldn’t see my case because I was wearing shorts. Can’t seem to understand this crass behaviour,” Nitish Rao, a resident of Nagarbhavi tweeted from his handle @dankchikidang on Tuesday.

“There was some issue with Aadhaar-based authentication and I was not able to get learners licence (LL) online.I went to the RTO office at Jnanabharathi to check the process to get it. But the moment they saw me in shorts, RTO officials were clearly irritated and started arguing with me. There was some exchange of words and they insisted they will not share any details just because I was wearing shorts,” Rao told TOI.
Transport commissioner N Shivakumar said: "There is no dress code, but RTOs are government offices. So, we expect people to come in proper attire. There are no written rules, but we will not entertain those who are not in proper covered clothes.”
“When there is no dress code for driving licence applicants at RTO, how can they deny a service to me? In fact, I didn’t see any helpdesk to get information to avail RTO services,” he added.
This is not the first time such an incident has been reported in the city. In 2016, a DL applicant who was wearing shorts while visiting Koramangala RTO faced a similar situation.
Many netizens extended support to Rao and shared their experience on Twitter. Shankar KV tweeted: “The same thing had happened to me where they objected and took money to issue a new DL... Bribe is Ok.. not shorts.”
Nikhil Kulkarni, another netizen, wrote: “My brother’s DL test was cancelled because while talking to RTO he was wearing sunglass.”