Saffron-green buses repainted red by Nagpur Municipal Corporation

NAGPUR: The Nagpur Municipal Corporation's (NMC) transport department has decided to colour city buses to the stipulated red colour instead of saffron and green as done earlier.

On August 22, TOI reported how NMC's transport department violated the city bus colour code when three Red Bus operators procured two midi buses each. Instead of the mandatory red, these six buses were painted saffron-green. Even the RTO (Nagpur city) overlooked the Motor Vehicle Rules mandating red colour for city buses and registered the buses.

A source in the NMC's transport department told TOI that all the six buses having saffron-green colours were painted back in mandatory signal red colour. Even the two saffron-green buses, which were registered by the city RTO, too were painted in red apart from four-other midi buses. These will soon be added to the NMC's Aapli Bus fleet.

"The decision was taken after the RTO (Nagpur city) refused permission to change city bus colour. Even the NMC's proposal to seek permission from Regional Transport Authority was refused by the RTO," said the source.

After TOI pointed out the mistake, the transport department put on hold the permits to run the buses in the city bus fleet.

After painting the buses red in colour, they were produced once again in the city RTO and it issued permits to operate in NMC's Aapli Bus fleet.

Transport committee chairman Bunty Kukde said the decision to colour the buses to signal red was taken to provide better service to the commuters. Through three Red Bus operators, the NMC is supposed to add 150 midi and 45 mini buses.

Presently, many city bus routes are overcrowded due to lack of buses. The NMC was supposed to operate 487 buses through three red and one green bus operators. But currently, only 317 buses are operating on 100 different routes ferrying about 1.25 lakh commuters.

Kukde said the six buses that arrived did not have saffron-green colour. He claimed that the colour of buses is flag orange and flag green.

These new buses will join the city bus fleet from September 25, said Neelmani Gupta, one of the red bus operators. Gupta said R K City Bus — one of the Red Vus operators — will add another 18 midi buses to its fleets.