CHENNAI: The CMBT bus terminus may be the hot spot for the travel operators to rake in moolah every holiday season. But irony is that the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA), which built the sprawling bus terminus, was unable to properly pay the lease amount for the land to the state government for last eight years.
Reason: a few of major public transport corporations that use the bus terminus were not paying the urban planning body the various fees for using the bus terminus.
The bus terminus, spread over 37 acres, was inaugurated in 2002 and was being maintained by the CMDA, which is in charge of the city’s urban planning. As per the lease agreement with the state government, the CMDA has to remit Rs 5 crore annually. The lease amount was being paid promptly from 2003-04 till the financial year 2007-08. However, after 2008-09, the CMDA had been keeping arrears in paying the lease amount.
According to reliable sources, the CMDA has a total outstanding of Rs 12.12 crores of the lease amount up to March 2015. It is learnt that the CMDA had told the state government that it would withhold the amount the transport corporations have to pay for using the bus terminus and pay only the remaining sum.
The transport corporations that use the terminus have to pay fees to the CMBT based on the number of their buses using the terminus and for what purpose. The entry fee per bus is Rs 25. Similarly, Rs 10 has to be paid for each bus for using the maintenance shed and Rs 5 for using the fuel filling station. According to audit reports, besides the annual lease amount, the CMDA also spends nearly 6 crore every year for the maintenance of the terminus which sees thousands of passengers every day.
However, a few state-owned transport corporations, which are already facing losses, stopped paying fees to the CMDA. Citing this and also the huge burden of spending money for the upkeep of the terminus, the CMDA, in turn, had told the state government that it would not pay the full lease amount and would withhold the sum the transport corporations owe it.
Meanwhile, in 2012, the CMDA also requested the state government to reduce the lease amount to Rs 1.5
crore since the revenue from the terminus was much lower than the cost of its maintenance. The request was rejected by the state government.