BENGALURU: The Congress-led state government’s key guarantee scheme, Stree Shakti that allows women to travel in government buses for free, will achieve a significant milestone by crossing 500-crore rides on Monday.
To mark the occasion, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar will symbolically issue tickets to women passengers.
After the Congress government took charge in 2023, Shakti was the first of the five guarantees to be launched on June 11, 2023.
From then till July 11, women have taken 497.79 crore rides in the four bus corporations — the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), Kalyana Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (KKRTC), North West Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (NWKRTC) and Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC). The total ticket cost is Rs 12,614 crore.
Including the rides by women, all the four bus corporations recorded 837.72 crore total rides ever since the Shakti scheme was launched. BMTC saw the highest number of women riders at 158.10 crore, followed by KSRTC 151.21 crore, NWKRTC 116.53 crore and KKRTC 71.94 crore.