Nagpur: The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) transport committee chairman Narendra Borkar on Wednesday directed the civic administration to increase Aapli Buses on city’s roads by 100 from February 1.
Currently, the civic body is ferrying only 175 buses out of 360 due to Covid-19 scare. According to Borkar, now that the Covid-19 vaccine has arrived, the NMC should increase the number of city buses.
Borkar gave the directives at a meeting of the transport department held on Wednesday.
He said municipal commissioner Radhakrishnan B is creating hurdles in procuring 40 electric buses. According to him, the civic body had received Rs3.50 crore from the central government as subsidy. The then municipal commissioner Tukaram Mundhe had finalized a firm to operate the electric buses after the civic body agreed to pay Rs66 per km. “Now, Radhakrishnan wants further reduction in rates,” he said.
Borkar also expressed anguish against the administration for releasing payment of Rs3.56 crore to DIMTS during the lockdown period. According to him, the NMC was supposed to pay DIMTS as per bus operating on city roads. “But it seems, the cash strapped NMC is giving undue favours,” he said.
He further said the transport committee will also discuss the issue of Rs90,000 payment to eight DIMTS officials who were stationed at New Delhi but assigned for the city project.
Meanwhile, after much wait, the department will organize an online auction of 110 defunct city buses parked in one of its city depots at Jaitala depot.
A senior official from the department told TOI that the ousted city bus contractor Vansh Nimay Infraprojects Limited had parked 230 defunct buses at three different places. “A total of 110 were parked at Jaitala depot, while remaining 120 buses on two private lands,” he said.
According to NMC sources, VNIL owns around 123 of the 230 scrapped buses while 106 were of NMC which it had received from the Central government under JNNURM.