Six GPS-enabled buses to ply on Karnal roads after 3 years

Parveen Arora

Karnal, March 5

A total of six GPS-enabled buses, purchased under the City Bus Service project, will finally ply on different local and long routes after three years.

Two non-AC buses were started on local routes — Karnal-Ballah and Karnal-Indri routes — while the repair and servicing of the remaining buses was being done to make these functional.

“We have got six buses — three AC and three non-AC — from the Karnal Municipal Corporation (KMC). We have started two non-AC buses on local routes. While the service of one bus has been done, the service of the remaining buses will be done soon. We are expecting all buses to be on the road by the end of March,” said Kuldeep Singh, GM, Roadways, Karnal Depot.

Due to the bad condition of one bus, the estimate of the repair work has gone up to Rs 96,000, for which we will have to take permission of the higher authorities, he added.

“We will try to start three AC buses on the Karnal-Chandigarh route. Each bus has a seating capacity of 20 persons, so it can be a costly affair to start with on long routes. We will try to increase the seating capacity to meet the expenses,” the GM said.

The KMC had purchased six buses under the City Bus Service project at a cost of Rs 1.60 crore and Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had inaugurated the bus service on January 20, 2018. These remained functional for some time on different routes, said an official of the KMC.

The buses proved to be a white elephant for the KMC, incurring losses of nearly Rs 7 lakh per month even after the routes were extended. The lack of interest among residents for using the public transport was the reason, which forced the authorities to shut the service. The KMC had an issue of space crunch and did not have its workshop, so these were given to the Haryana Roadways Karnal depot for operation.