bareilly from nagaland to maharashtra punjab to up there are now on indias highways close to or even more than 45 million trucks that are stranded waiting for the cash situation to ease general secretary of all india motor transport congress aimtc naveen gupta told toi on saturday that out of the more than 180 crore commercial vehicles in india an estimated 45 lakh are currently stranded taking business down by almost 50 a delegation of the transport union met union finance minister arun jaitley on friday pleading to bail them out acknowledging the ongoing crisis that has severely hit transportation the finance minister assured us that concrete steps would be taken to provide immediate relief to the transporters gupta saidmeanwhile transport associations from north to south and east to west said almost in one voice that business was down right now by 4050 across all regions in turn adversely affecting the supply chain member of the akhil gujarat truck transport association mukesh dave said it will not be wrong to say 40 of earnings have been lost truckers are now afraid to venture out fearing that they might be indefinitely stuck in the absence of a steady cash flow for long distance truckloads the turnaround time is 1214 days but truck drivers are in a dilemma what if they venture out and then get stuck keeping them on the roads for much longer secretary of south zone aimtc gr shamugappa said that some provision for daily expenses of truck drivers would help we appreciate the fact that there has been some relaxation in the form of free passage at toll gates and banned currencies being accepted at filling stations however there is no clarity on how the transporters and truck drivers would manage their daily expenses during trips the withdrawal limit on current account for small businesses is rs 50000 a week transport unions during their recent interaction with jaitley have urged the government to raise it to rs 5 lakh meanwhile the situation has also been aggravated by the demandsupply chain getting hit with demand slumping to new lows traders are not paying up during offloading they either cite slow markets or give us banned notes said bobby singh a transporter in lucknow some of our trucks that were stranded for a while were bailed out later with local help but only to be grounded indefinitelyoperations are close to nil for us