Fate of 37 ramshackle buses hangs in balance after F&CC meet deferred

Ludhiana: The reserve price to dispose of 37 dilapidated city buses will be decided by the members of finance and contracts committee (F&CC), as the officials have put up a proposal for the same. Though the meeting was scheduled for Friday but it had to be postponed due to heated argument between senior deputy mayor Shyam Sunder Malhotra and other officials. Now, the F&CC officials will have to wait for the next meeting to take a decision.
These 37 buses have been lying in dilapidated condition at Tajpur Road workshop for past many years. Earlier, attempts were made to bring these buses in use, but they failed miserably and now a committee was formed to check whether these buses could be used or not. The officials claimed the committee had recommended to scrap these buses.
The committee has proposed 40% reserve price for buses purchased in 2011, 45% reserve price for those purchased in 2012, and 50% for those purchased in 2013. The officials also proposed to sell the buses through online process, which was followed by the Pepsu Road Transport Corporation (PRTC).
However, another survey was conducted to check the condition of these buses almost two years ago, and at that time it was estimated that at least Rs 15 lakh will be required to repair a single bus, taking the total cost of repairing all the buses to more than Rs 2.5 crore. However at that time, it was mentioned in the survey report that there was a provision to declare any vehicle defunct after at least 10 years, but these buses were not that old at that time.
One of the officials claimed that they took some officials from transport department for preparing this report in the committee. He said they checked the condition of these buses and it was declared that these were beyond repair. Now, the now report has been sent to senior officials who will declare these buses totally defunct and give them in scrap.
Unused buses turned to scrap
Notably, MC had a lot of 120 city buses out of which, 83 were given to a private operator and 37 were parked at Tajpur Road workshop. The buses did not come into use and turned to scrap.
The MC had purchased these buses under Jawahar Lal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. The initial plan was to get 200 buses, but the MC only got 120.
These buses have also remained in news for poor upkeep and political parties have also attacked each other for their poor maintenance.