Vansh Nimay claims Rs541 cr from NMC

Nagpur: Vansh Nimay Infraprojects Ltd, the expelled private city bus operator, has charged Nagpur Municipal Corporation with causing it Rs541 crore loss. The firm has slapped an arbitration notice on NMC and cited lack of infrastructure, no periodic fare revisions and illegal passenger vehicles forced it to suffer such a huge loss.

The NMC had not renewed the Vansh Nimay agreement in February 2007 for 10 years, which ended on February 28, 2017, and instead appointed three red and one green bus operators to run the city bus service. The city bus service had actually deteriorated after NMC had took over the operation from Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation due to lack of effective monitoring over Vansh Nimay.

In its arbitration notice served recently, Vansh Nimay highlighted that the agreement with NMC promised to pay it against students' concessions. But it overlooked this and even forced the operator to give concessions that ran over Rs94 crore.

Besides this, NMC failed to provide parking facilities which ruined the city bus maintenance and subsequently affected plying of number of city buses, the notice stated. "Due to lack of infrastructure Vansh Nimay suffered Rs244 crore loss," the notice stated.

Vansh Nimay claimed that the NMC failed to act against illegal passenger vehicles as was promised in the agreement. It pegged Rs88 crore loss due to this. It also claimed that the NMC had not revised the fares despite hike in fuel prices and which caused it Rs15.50 crore loss.

Though NMC officials were not available for comments, official sources said there is no question of paying Vansh Nimay. The operator had not even bothered to pay royalty which ran into crores. According to NMC sources, the operator had defaulted on payments of around Rs165 crore including royalty of Rs120 crore.

Against 470 buses that Vansh Nimay had agreed to ply, not even half that number actually plied. Nearly 190 road permits were secured from RTO to enable these buses to ply but many of these routes were not serviced at all causing inconvenience to the public, sources claimed.

The huge dues are a major reason that the NMC had not renewed VNIL's agreement, said a source in NMC's transport department. Despite sufficient opportunities and time given to Vansh Nimay, it even failed to mend its ways, services, and failed to discharge the financial liability, sources pointed out.

Even VNIL had also defaulted taxes due to the government. As per motor vehicles rules, VNIL was to deposit 3.5% of total revenue as passenger tax and children nutrition fund with RTO. VNIL has not rendered the accounts so total revenue could be ascertained, nor submitted the receipts of having paid taxes, sources revealed.