Ensuring a grand organisation of the Mahakumbh to be held in Prayagraj in 2025, the Yogi Adityanath government will add as many as 5,000 new buses to the fleet of UP State Road Transport Corporation to facilitate luxurious and easy travel of lakhs of devotees.
The Transport department, by March 2023, will purchase about 1,575 buses. Of these, 1,200 buses will be included in the UPSRTC fleet. It may be recalled that the Kumbh Mela has been organised in a grand way since 2019 in the state. The area of the Kumbh Mela has also been increased by about 15 per cent. The number of devotees participating in this fair is expected to be about 40 crore this time.
According to UPSRTC Managing Director Sanjay Kumar, as per the target set by the department regarding purchase of buses, 1,575 buses will be purchased by March 2023 and out of these, 1,200 buses will join the fleet.
“The rest of the buses will join the fleet in April-May. After this, between April 1, 2023 and March 2024, UPSRTC will purchase 2,000 new buses,” he said and added that from April 1, 2024 till December 2024 i.e. eight months before Mahakumbh, the remaining 1,500 buses would also be purchased.
These buses will be equipped with state-of-the-art facilities. The government will spend about Rs 2,000 crore to buy 5,000 buses.
The UPSRTC will also abandon old and dilapidated buses. According to Sanjay Kumar, the department is working to replace the old and dilapidated buses with new ones having state-of-the-art facilities.
There are 11,200 buses in the SPSRTC fleet.
Transport Minister Dayashankar Singh said that in pursuance of the directives of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a plan had been made to purchase new buses before the Mahakumbh.
New buses are being included in the UPSRTC fleet in a planned manner. Around 2,000 buses have been procured and soon these buses will serve the people.
These new buses will be exclusively used to bring passengers from long distances to Mahakumbh. With this, the journey of a large number of devotees coming to Mahakumbh will be easier. Buses will be available every 10 minutes on each route to reach there. These buses will serve to bring the passengers to Sangam city and take them back.
In 2019, over 24 crore devotees had participated in the Kumbh. This time, the Kumbh Mela is going to be more grand. While Rs 4,200 crore was spent on the Mahakumbh Mela in 2019, the government has set a budget of Rs 6,800 crore for the Kumbh Mela to be held in 2025. At the same time, the fair is also proposed to be organised on 3,700 hectare land.