Even as the State Government is claiming to revive the ailing white elephant Odisha State Road Transport Corporation (OSRTC), the ground reality is something different if one goes through the information obtained through Right to Information Act (RTI) from the corporation.
The OSRTC was formed with the motto to ply buses in remote areas and non-profitable routes in the State to provide connectivity. While the OSRTC has a total fleet of 461 buses, the number of on road buses is 373 and the number of off road vehicles is 88. In comparison, the number of private buses is 8,000 to 10,000.
So the corporation does not have one - tenth of the vehicles under private operators.
Out of the total 461 buses, only 90 of them have insurance cover. The rest 371 buses are not covered by insurance. The number of accident claims yet to be paid to the victims is 1,345. The number of Motor Accident Claim Tribunal Cases (MACT) orders made against OSRTC to pay the claim is 413. The total number of claims to be paid by OSRTC is 1,260. To make matters worse many of the buses don’t have fitness certificates and taxes have not been paid.
Shockingly, from 1973 no accident claims have been paid to the victims. If these claims are paid to the accident victims, OSRTC’s financial backbone would be broken, said RTI activist and lawyer Subrat Kumar Nanda.
The corporation has a capital of Rs 10.80 crore out of which the State Government has provided Rs 5 crore as matching grant. When now a new bus costs Rs 25 to 30 lakh , the State Government’s share of Rs 5 crore cannot revive an ailing white elephant like OSRTC. So the State Government should invest more, in the range of Rs 40 to 50 crore if it actually wants to revive the corporation, he said.
However, the OSRTC suffered one of the heaviest losses when it purchased Swaraj Mazda buses during the tenure of the then Transport Minister Bhagabat Behera. The buses could not be repaired and their spare parts were not available. More than Rs 5 crore went down the drain as the buses turned into scrap. Further, the new Volvo buses procured by OSRTC to ply on important routes are yet to get permits and are standing idle, Nanda said.