The city buses have resumed their services with ten of its buses starting operation in various routes of steel city, taking the total count of buses to 22. The Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee (JNAC), the custodian of city buses, rolled out 10 of the rest 38 buses on Wednesday. The rest 28 buses were expected to resume service in another one week or so.
While 12 of the 50 buses, grounded since October 2014, made a comeback on six routes of Jamshedpur last year, the fate of the bulk of the fleet (38 buses) was hanging fire with no bidder coming forward to run the vehicles on the other routes.
“We want to ensure that all the buses are on the roads. We have got a bidder for the rest 38 buses. The tender committee has selected Bhola Nath Singh, a local private party to whom all the 38-buses have been outsourced. An agreement has been signed with the private party who has also deposited the requisite security money for running the buses,” said a JNAC official.
JNAC has prepared afresh a route chart for the 38 buses. The 10 buses which were introduced, on Wednesday, would ply between Dimna Road in Mango to places like Sakchi, Burmamines, Tatanagar Railway Station, Dhatkidih, Golmuri and Tinplate.
Notably, the urban civic body that took over the reins of the city buses from Jharkhand Tourism Development Corporation (JTDC) in 2014, had fixed a tentative deadline of mid-April for resuming the bus service.