Frame, issue timetable for operation of buses on permitted routes: HC

Saurabh Malik

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Chandigarh, March 11

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the state Transport Department to frame and issue final timetable for the operation of buses on permitted routes. For the purpose, Justice Harsimran Singh Sethi of the High Court has set a six-week deadline.

Justice Sethi also granted the state Transport Department the liberty to issue, within seven days, a temporary timetable for smooth operation of the buses till the final schedule is out. The Bench also made it clear that the State counsel’s submission on permitting buses only on routes for which they had a valid permit and not beyond the permitted routes would also remain in operation till the temporary timetable was framed.

The direction by Justice Sethi came on a petition filed against the State of Punjab and other respondents by the New Deep Bus Service and another petitioner through senior advocate Akshay Bhan with counsel Sangram Singh Saron, Surabhi Kaushik, Rohit Sud and Rohit Nagpal.

The Bench, during the course of hearing, was told that the petitioners’ grievance stemmed from the fact that the buses, already operating under the old timetable, were not being allowed to run without framing a new timetable. It was, as such, causing prejudice to the petitioners.

Their counsel submitted that the petitioners had no grievance regarding the framing of a new timetable by the department concerned. But the buses should be allowed to operate according to the old timetable till then “keeping in view the validity of the permit which they hold on the respective routes”.

State counsel Navdeep Chhabra added on instructions that the old time table would be allowed to operate till a temporary timetable was framed.