The Hindu : Daily hire charge for Govt. buses reduced to Rs. 2,000

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 29, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Daily hire charge for Govt. buses reduced to Rs. 2,000

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI APRil 28. State Transport Corporation buses can now be hired at Rs. 2,000 a day on a contract basis, the Transport Minister, R. Viswanathan, announced in the Assembly today.

To encourage tourists, the Minister said the daily hire charge had been reduced from Rs. 6,500 to 2,000. Also, the charge would be regulated on the basis of Rs. 15 a km, depending upon the distance covered by the buses, with a minimum of 100 km.

If the passengers travelling by the State Express Transport Corporation (SETC) buses reserved their tickets both for onward and return journeys at the same time, a discount of 10 per cent on the fare would be allowed.

Steps would be taken to bring the fare levied on passengers of semi-deluxe and deluxe buses operated by the SETC during daytime on a par with that of mofussil buses.

The intake of MBBS students would be increased from 60 to 100 at the Perundurai Medical College, run by the Institute of Road Transport (IRT), and the additional seats would be allotted to wards of the employees. Also, it had been planned to start PG degree courses in M.D (community medicine and paediatrics) at the college and an ME structural engineering course at the Erode Engineering College managed by the IRT.

In southern districts, 20 emergency accident relief centres would be opened in the current year. At present, there were 11 such centres, the Minister said, winding up the discussion on the demands for the Transport department.

Sharp exchanges

The Minister's reply was peppered with sharp exchanges between the Treasury Benches and the CPI/CPI (M) MLAs over the relevance of Communism in the context of a liberalised economic scenario.

While Mr. Viswanathan asked why the Communists in the State were not responsive to the winds of change, the Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, came up with a reply "where they are in power, they have realised the futility of the philosophy."

Objecting, the CPI (M) leader, J. Hemachandran, said his party's alliance with the AIADMK in 2001 showed that it had changed. Even as other Leftists vociferously protested, the CPI MLA, V. Sivapunniyam, asserted that the philosophy had a scientific basis and would never die.

CM clarifies

Earlier intervening in the debate, Ms. Jayalalithaa reiterated that the State Government had no intention to privatise its transport corporations or hand over buses to the private sector.

The Chief Minister said "what we are considering is only to let the private sector operate certain bus routes." When the PMK's G.K. Mani said such a move would affect the rural populace, she shot back that her Government would not take any decision that would affect the rural people. "We will not allow the people in villages to suffer," she said.

Another PMK legislator, I. Ganesan, asked why should the Government go in for the phased liberalisation when the transport corporations were staging a recovery in their financial status. The Finance Minister C. Ponnaiyan, replied that even this became possible only because of the fare revision in December 2001.

Student subsidy

Mr. Viswanathan informed the House that while the transport corporations sought a reimbursement of Rs. 252 crores towards student subsidy, the Government proposed to release Rs. 85.76 crores this year to three very sick transport corporations, due to stringent economic position, and requested others to regard the subsidy scheme as social cost.

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