Even as the State Government is planning to streamline the public transport system in the city and turn it into world-class by procuring 400 more buses by forming a new company before the Hockey World Cup, it has come to the fore that 80 City Buses already operating under the JNURM scheme in public-private partnership mode by the Bhubaneswar-Puri Transport Service limited (BPTCl) and the Dream Team Sahara (DTS) have no fitness certificates, permits or insurances.
The Transport Department has informed that it would not be held responsible in case of any accident or any other eventuality.
To make matters worse, out of the 200 vehicles procured earlier for the City Bus service, 40 were kept idle for years, during which the vehicles accumulated dues of Rs 1.20 crore on account of tax and penalties.
However in a letter, the Urban Development Department Joint Secretary directed the city RTO-II to waive the Rs 1.20-crore dues. And the RTO allegedly flouting the rules waived the dues. This has raised many eyebrows.
All India Anti-Corruption Bureau convenor Subrat Kumar Nanda wonders how a Government department issued directions to another department. It is questionable how the Urban Development Department directed the Transport Department to waive the huge tax. This is violation of the Constitutional provisions, he says.
While the Transport Department is very proactive in collecting taxes from the common man, how could it cause a loss of Rs 1.20 crore to the State exchequer by waiving the dues, Nanda asks. He demands that responsibility be fixed for this act and the lost revenue be collected from the concerned officials.
It has been further revealed that out of the 200 vehicles procured as City Buses, about 60 per cent of the buses are of Swaraj Mazda make even though many allege that the company’s service is poor. These buses were procured by the then Urban Development Secretary because the company was giving a subsidy of Rs 1 lakh per bus.
But now, these vehicles’ conditions have become so rickety that there is no chance of overhauling them; and they can only be sold as scrap. A high-level inquiry can only unearth the acts of omissions and commissions by the officials and the gross misuse of public funds, said Nanda.