NEW DELHI: Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta on Wednesday wrote a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah urging him to order a CBI probe into maintenance of old Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses, saying some of them caught fire recently, endangering the lives of people.
In his letter, Gupta said that a Rs 50-lakh tender has been awarded for the maintenance of the old DTC buses for three years and this "smells of corruption". No immediate reaction was available from the Delhi government or the ruling Aam Aadmi Party on Gupta's charges.
"There was a provision for phasing out these buses after running for 7.5 lakh kms or completing 12 years. But the Kejriwal government wrongly changed the provision, making it 15 years," Gupta wrote.
He claimed that all the buses running in Delhi are "overage", which is why they are catching fire. "The lives of Delhiites are in danger due to the negligence of the Delhi government. A big accident might occur any day," the Delhi BJP chief said, urging Shah to order a CBI probe into the matter.
Gupta further alleged that no new bus has been bought for the DTC since Arvind Kejriwal became the chief minister of Delhi. The number of DTC buses has come down from 6,200 to 3,700, he claimed. Last month, the Delhi government formed a six-member committee to find out the root cause of DTC buses catching fire.
The committee's report is awaited. Four incidents of fire in DTC buses have been reported in the last two months. On Tuesday, a cluster bus caught fire in southeast Delhi's Govindpuri area. There were no casualties in any of these incidents.