While the Delhi Government has announced that around 3,000 buses, including 1,000 “premium” buses, will be brought on the roads of the city by November 2016, sources claimed that it will be very difficult to meet the target considering that earlier Governments have failed to procure any new buses in the last three-four years despite floating repeated tenders.
An official said on the condition of anonymity while it will itself be a difficult task to procure 1,000 buses in the cluster scheme by April-May for which the approval is already there, procuring 1,000 buses for the DTC by August would be an even bigger challenge because even the tender has not been floated for it.
The official said the tendering process itself takes around six months to be completed, that too if everything goes smoothly. “But considering the last few tenders have failed to procure any buses, the big question is will the tender go through this timeIJ Only if it goes through, we can talk about the exact time needed to procure the buses. Otherwise it’s only talk without substance,” said the official, adding that even if the tender goes through, it will take a minimum of another 2-3 months for the manufacturers to provide all 1,000 buses.
It must be noted that tenders after tenders have been issued to procure new buses over the last three years, but all efforts have failed to procure any new buses.
The DTC has the approved capacity of 5,500 buses, but is running only 4,700 buses at the moment. Out of those, around 900 buses are old normal-floor buses that will soon need to be phased out. It has been trying to procure around 1300 new buses that will keep its fleet at 5,500, but all its efforts have failed.