‘No checking’ of passengers at Himachal Bhawan

Shimla, April 24

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“There are no security arrangements for the passenger boarding the Volvo buses of the Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) and Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (HPTDC) from Himachal Bhawan at Sikandra Road, New Delhi and they travel at their own risk”, claims RTI activist Dev Ashish Bhattacharya.

In reply to an RTI filed by Bhattacharya, the public information officers (PIOs) of the HRTC and the HPTDC have acknowledged that as many as eleven HRTC and two HPTDC Volvo buses leave for various destinations from Himachal Bhawan in Delhi but there is no checking of the passengers or the luggage.

He said that it was strange that the Resident Commissioner at Delhi was a senior IPS officer and still no action had been taken to eliminate this major security risk.

“The Resident Commissioner in his reply to my RTI filed on February 19, 2016 revealed that there are no CCTV cameras for surveillance on the passengers boarding the bus from outside Himachal Bhawan complex”, he added.

The RTI activist urged the government to install CCTV cameras and also depute a police officer for frisking of passengers and also for checking the luggage to insure that there was nothing dangerous that could risk the lives of other passengers.

Arrangements should be made to store the identities of passenger boarding the buses so that they could be identified in case of any mishap as a large number of VVIPs, including ministers, MLAs bureaucrats and others visit the place, he said. — TNS