60 more Starbuses in city from May 15

NAGPUR: After a long wait of around five months, city bus operator Vansh Nimay Infra Projects will add 60 new buses on city roads from May 15. Bharatiya Janata Party national president Nitin Gadkari will dedicate the buses in a programme to be held on May 15 at Town Hall, mayor Archana Dehankar told TOI.

At present Vansh is operating 230 Starbuses of its own. With this development, the city bus fleet strength will reach at 290. NMC sources said the city received 240 new buses under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in December 2009. They were supposed to ply from January 26, 2010.

However, the induction was delayed because of several reasons. For these additional 240 buses, the operator was asked to pay 30% cost, which would be NMC’s share, to the central government.

This amount came to around Rs 18.31 crore. VNIP has so far deposited only Rs 2.50 crore and was given permission to operate only 60 buses, said Dehankar. However, traffic police fear the new buses would only add to traffic congestion in city as the operator had no place to park buses or operate them from. They have raised the issue with NMC but nothing has happened so far.

The mayor said NMC was planning to acquire 4.25 acres of Nagpur Improvement Trust land near MSRTC bus stand in Ganeshpeth for the purpose. Vansh Nimay's manager Mahesh Kandalkar said that it was ready to operate the buses. The company was in the process of tying up loan from some financial institutions to pay the remaining amount, he added. Mahesh Morone, incharge of NMC’s transport company, said the operator was regularly depositing royalty for buses on city roads. He admitted that batteries of new buses lying unused since December, were discharged. “We would get them replaced,” he said.
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