The showdown between the transport departments of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Uttarakhand on the issue of seizure of roadways buses ended on Friday with the department releasing the seized buses. The transport departments of both UP and Uttarakhand had seized the roadways buses of each other on Wednesday and Thursday. The general public was the suffering from this showdown between the transport departments of two States. The standoff was resolved after top officials held talks with each other.
The enforcement wing of Uttarakhand transport department had seized 17 buses of UP roadways and one bus each of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh roadways. On Friday the officials of UP and Rajasthan roadways held a meeting with the Regional Transport Officer (RTO) Dinesh Chandra Pathoi at his office and pleaded for release of the buses. The RTO Pathoi told The Pioneer that the buses were seized as they had no documents of road tax payments, pollution certificate and driving licenses.
He said that these buses are being released on an undertaking submitted by the concerned depots that they would submit the required documents within 15 days. The manager traffic of Rajasthan roadways Ram Kishore who had to come from Jaipur said that RTO released the bus after seeing the documents which they had brought.
The State has an inter-State agreement for movements of passenger buses with different States which decides the number of buses, routes and mileages of the buses of each other. The problem with the transport departments of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh is that they have failed to reach a comprehensive inter-State agreement even after 14 years of creation of Uttarakhand from UP. In absence of a proper agreement the operation of buses between UP and Uttarakhand is plagued by regular spats between the officials of transport departments of two States. One of the official of Uttarakhand roadways disclosed that buses of State plying to Delhi, Haryana or Rajasthan or even districts like Haldwani had to pass through UP and in absence of an agreement the State roadways and passengers face problems. He disclosed that the UP being a much larger State plies much more buses in Uttarakhand than the State plies in UP.