Diversion of about 50 percent of fleet of the State transport corporation for Ardh Kumbh is inconveniencing the passengers of other routes in the State. The Uttarakhand Transport Corporation (UTC) has inducted a fleet of 500 buses to ferry passengers to and fro from Haridwar. lakhs of devotees would throng Haridwar on auspicious days to take a dip in holy Ganga. To transport devotees the UTC has made an elaborate plan. However deployment of buses for Ardha Kumbha is causing problems to the commuters on the other routes. The passengers on these routes are facing the pinch as buses are off these routes. “I am waiting for bus to Kotdwar from last one and half hour but buses on the route appear to have simply vanished! Normally buses are available every half an hour’’ said an anguished Manish Naithani while standing near Rispana bridge on Thursday. He was not alone, passengers on routes of hills and other destinations faced similar problems while buses marked ‘ Ardha Kumbha special’ to Haridwar plied one after other. It is worth mentioning here that the UTC has a fleet of about 1200 buses out of which about 150 are off the roads leaving just more than 1000 buses which are operational.
The General Manager (GM) operation of the corporation Deepak Jain told The Pioneer that 500 buses drawn from various routes are pressed in Ardha Kumbha. He clarified that buses are diverted from the routes where more than one service daily are operational. Jain said that the buses would be diverted on the days of major snans only and the days where more devotees are expected to visit Haridwar. The GM claimed that the process of procurement of 400 new buses in the fleet of Uttarakhand roadways is in final stages and hoped that these buses would be available by the month of March.