BENGALURU: It was a pricey affair for hundreds of people in the city, who were heading out to their native places to cast their votes on Thursday. They struggled to catch buses and those who managed to catch one, had to shell out extra money to reach their destinations. With the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) and Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) buses, devoted to election duty to carry polling staff to their allocated booths, the general public complained they had to wait for long.
In the absence of enough KSRTC buses to destinations like Mandya, Mysuru, Udupi, Dakshina Kannada, Chikkamagaluru, Chitradurga, Tumakuru, Chikkaballapur, Hassan and Kolar, private travel operators exploited the sudden surge in demand and hiked rates, some even increasing the fares four-fold. People complained that along with deploying additional buses to cater to the sudden rise in demand, the state transport department should have regulated private players from overcharging.
Kempegowda Bus Terminal, Kalasipalya bus stand, Kengeri bus stand and others were overcrowded with people waiting for buses. With large groups of people leaving the city, as many as 465 BMTC buses will operate on KSRTC routes on Friday and 40 buses on Saturday.
Mohammad Aziz, a voter heading to Mangaluru complained that private travel operators exploiting passengers has become common during festivals and long weekends and blamed the lack of enforcement by the transport officials.
Passengers travelling to Udupi, Mangaluru, Kundapura and other regions who used to pay around Rs 800 were asked to pay more than Rs 3,000. The fares for the return ticket on Sunday have skyrocketed too.
KSRTC has deployed 2,780 buses for election duty across 14 Lok Sabha constituencies. KSRTC along with BMTC deployed around 1,500 additional buses to handle the crowd.