It’s an open secret for long — private buses running along unallocated routes and just ahead of the KSRTC services in a bid to up their collection graph, badly affect the revenue of the corporation.
So far, despite written complaints, no action was taken as the private buses were owned by “highly influential” parties. However, the scene changed overnight when new Transport Commissioner Rishi Raj Singh took charge.
Singh got a petition from the KSRTC officers that despite them submitting written complaints, the concerned RTOs had not taken any action.
The IAS officer immediately swung into action and asked the various RTO officers for an explanation on their failure to take action. The result is there for everyone to see. The last two days saw state-wide raids by RTO officials, where buses owned by relatives of political leaders and RTO officials themselves like ‘Holy Mariya’ and ‘Saranya’ were caught and booked.
Another rigid officer ex-Transport Commissioner Sen Kumar says, “This problem is acute more in the northern districts like Wayanad. There is a lobby to help the private bus owners and get the aid of MVD officials. The reason is simple. Once you give a permit to a new private bus, you’ll get undue ‘benefits’ for the next 15 years. But this does not happen in the case of KSRTC buses.”
“For long I’ve been writing complaints about private buses flouting permit routes. Then I decided to write to the new commissioner. Three days later I got calls from three RTO officials and I was stunned. They wanted details which I gave.
The last two days, they carried out the inspection and booked erring private buses which had a free reign so far,” Perumbavoor ATO Venugopal said.
Source: Deccan Chronicle
