Vehicle overloading has become routine on Guwahati’s roads despite laws intended to prevent it
A shared taxi on GS Road does not come to a full stop. It slows just enough for another passenger to squeeze in. The door stays open, the vehicle leans under the added weight, and then merges back into the evening traffic stream. No one intervenes. No penalty is issued. The pattern repeats across Guwahati’s roads every day.
What appears on GS Road is not an exception but a routine feature of the city’s transport system.
Vehicle overloading, across both passenger and goods transport, has become one of Guwahati’s most persistent and least effectively addressed road safety concerns. From shared taxis operating along Beltola, Lokhra and Jalukbari routes, to trucks moving through commercial areas such as Paltan Bazaar with loads beyond permissible limits, the practice spans vehicle types and road networks.
At the national level, the scale of the issue is already reflected in official figures. India recorded over 4.64 lakh road accidents in 2023, resulting in more than 1.73 lakh deaths and nearly 4.47 lakh injuries. Of these fatalities, around 12,000 deaths were directly linked to vehicle overloading, according to data from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.
Despite being one of the more preventable risk factors, overloading continues with limited deterrence.
The legal framework is clearly defined. The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019 prescribes a base penalty of Rs 20,000 for overloading goods vehicles, with an additional Rs 2,000 for every extra tonne beyond permissible limits. For passenger vehicles, Section 194A sets a penalty of Rs 200 per excess passenger, along with licence suspension for repeat violations.
On paper, the rules are strict and enforceable. On the ground, enforcement remains uneven.
A traffic police officer stationed near GS Road described the scale of the challenge.
“We often spot overloaded passenger vehicles, but the number is far more than what we can deal with. The passengers have to commute too. Too many people and less vehicles,” he said.
His observation points to a structural issue rather than isolated non-compliance. Guwahati’s rapid expansion has created demand for last-mile connectivity that the city’s formal public transport system has struggled to meet. As economic activity in Kamrup district has grown, so has the number of commercial vehicles on city roads, along with a growing acceptance that carrying passengers beyond registered capacity has become routine.
Operators respond to passenger demand within their operating constraints, while passengers continue boarding overcrowded vehicles due to limited alternatives. With enforcement remaining limited, overloading has become normalised across the city. For many commuters, affordability and necessity leave little room for choice.
A young college student travelling daily from Narengi to Handique College described her situation.
“Not everyone can pay for private taxis. With these overcrowded shared taxis, we can travel from home to college and back for less than fifty rupees,” she told GPlus.
Her statement reflects a wider commuter reality in the city, where cost considerations routinely outweigh safety concerns, especially in daily travel.
On the goods transport side, the pattern is structurally different but leads to the same outcome. Trucks and pickup vehicles carrying loads beyond their permissible gross vehicle weight are commonly seen on routes feeding Guwahati’s commercial zones.
Responsibility in such cases is often difficult to assign to drivers alone.
A commercial pickup driver explained that loading decisions are typically made elsewhere in the supply chain.
Being a driver, he said, he had little control over what was loaded or in what quantity. Decisions on the volume of goods were made by transport companies or the individuals hiring the vehicle. “We move whatever is already on the truck,” he said.
This points to a structural blind spot in how overloading is enforced. Section 113 of the Motor Vehicles Act defines permissible weight limits for vehicles, while Section 114 empowers authorised officers to intercept and weigh suspected overloaded vehicles. A 2018 Supreme Court directive also instructed state governments to set up weighbridges at key points to ensure systematic monitoring of commercial transport.
In practice, however, enforcement infrastructure in Guwahati remains limited and inconsistent.
A senior official from the District Transport Office (DTO), speaking to GPlus on condition of anonymity, acknowledged the constraints faced by enforcement agencies.
“We keep checking and finding violators but we have limited manpower and it's not possible to enforce everything,” the official said, adding that recent drives against overloading have been conducted across Guwahati and will continue.
The statement reflects a broader institutional limitation: enforcement exists, but its scale is insufficient compared to the volume of violations on the ground.
At the national level, policy intervention has recently focused on making overloading financially unattractive. In April 2026, the government introduced revised rules for national highways under which overloaded vehicles face graded toll penalties of up to four times the base rate. The system is integrated with the VAHAN database, allowing tracking of repeat violations across states.
The logic is straightforward: increase the cost of violation until compliance becomes more economical than overloading.
The limitation, however, remains substantial. The framework relies on weighment infrastructure and FASTag-enabled toll plazas, limiting its reach largely to national highways rather than urban roads. As a result, vehicles operating within city limits, whether a mini bus on GS Road, a shared cab from Narengi, or an overloaded pickup moving through Sijubari, largely remain outside its scope.
Urban mobility experts have repeatedly noted that without consistent enforcement within city limits, overloading will continue to contribute to traffic congestion, accelerated road damage, and increased accident risk in fast-growing urban centres.
Guwahati already has the legal tools required to address the issue: defined penalties, enforcement provisions, and national-level policy backing. What remains inconsistent is implementation at scale.
The gap between regulation and reality is where the problem persists.
Until that gap is addressed, overloaded vehicles will continue to move through the city as part of everyday transport behaviour: normalised by commuters, shaped by economic constraints, and sustained by limited enforcement capacity.
On GS Road, the shared taxi will continue to slow briefly. The door will remain open. And another passenger will continue to step in.