NEW DELHI: Despite floating the tenders for the development, maintenance and operations of 1395 bus queue shelters across Delhi twice, the Delhi Transport Infrastructure Development Corporation (DTIDC) has failed to attract any bidders.
The DTIDC had floated tender in 2015 inviting firms to work on private-public partnership mode for a period of five years, but no firms came forward fearing losses as majority of these bus shelters are located in outer Delhi and areas with less footfall.
Owing to this, these bus queue shelters are lying in a pathetic condition. And as a result daily passengers are at the receiving end.
Rakesh Kumar, who boards bus from Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg at ITO, said, “The AAP’s start was pretty good. But now, everything has come down to politics. Every other day they are fighting with the Centre. They are not doing anything for the public. There is no bus shelter at this stop. Boarding bus from here is risky.”
These shelters are maintained by the DTIDC—a company under the Delhi government to look after the shelters. The DTIDC invites the private players to invest in developing these shelters and display their advertisements on the structures of bus shelters.
“Bus shelters at prime locations are the bone of contention between the government and the private players. Every investor wants to make investment at prime locations as their advertisement will be more prominent at these locations. No company wants to redevelop shelters in outer areas of Delhi, hence there was no response to the tenders,” said a DTIDC official.
The government even formed a committee to look into the matter and decided that optical fibre sheets will be used instead of solid metal in raising the structure. But the situation still remains the same, informed the official.
Answering a query in the two-day special assembly session, Delhi Transport Minister Satyendra Jain said, “The DTIDC has once again floated tenders for development of 431 bus queue shelters from the same list a week ago.”