City buses once again face the threat of getting grounded as the Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) and Jharkhand Tourism Development Corporation (JTDC) are heading towards another round of face-off over running the buses. In the midst of the storm brewing the deadline of April 1 for handing over the business to a new player is likely to be pushed by another fortnight. The RMC had been living on borrowed time as the JTDC had set a deadline for the municipal body to take over reins of city buses from new financial year. The tourism corporation had expressed inability to run buses from January 1, 2015 however agreed to continue with the burden till April 1. “It cannot happen overnight so we asked for a transition period of one month. In one month we will take over all buses and run after repairing them,” said Town Commissioner, Prashant Kumar.
The municipal body has requested the tourism corporation to share the burden till May, release buses in phased manner to facilitate repair of dilapidated buses and wants to use the extension period to address issues related to permit, road tax and insurance before new operator takes charge of the passenger transit system. Notwithstanding the proposals regarding new player from April 1, the RMC is yet to ink pact with M/S Kishore Mantri Travels which has been selected for running the buses. As the proposal envisages the travel company will begin operations with 40 buses and get additional 29 buses later on. The selected bidder, however, is still in dark about what went wrong with the proposal and is still awaiting a green signal from the RMC for beginning the services. The firm has submitted the terms of agreement to the urban civic body. The RMC vowed to complete formalities in next few days.
“We have sent the agreement for vetting and an agreement will be signed in one or two days,” said Kumar. Meanwhile, the JTDC has expressed inability in supporting the RMC due to expiration of the contract with the agency that used to provide manpower to run buses. The JTDC had declined to support last year as well but had to take care of the buses after promises by RMC to put up an alternate mechanism for the passenger service. “The contract with the agency (that was hired) has ended so we are helpless,” said Managing Director of JTDC, Sunil Kumar. Interestingly, how the buses will be run until the private player takes charge remained an unanswered question till the time of writing the report.