BHUBANESWAR: The discord between the state government and private bus operators following the launch of location accessible multimodal initiative (LAccMI) for affordable rural transportation has exposed the underbelly of the transportation network in Odisha.
Not only do the apex body of the bus owners and the Transport department disagree over the impact of the initiative on the operators at the district level, but there is also disagreement on the number of private buses plying in the state.
While All Odisha Private Bus Owners’ Association claims around 14,000 buses of around 8,000 operators are plying in the state, Transport Department sources said around 12,200 buses have permits and of them around 8,200 pay taxes.
As per association general secretary Debendra Sahoo, 14,000 private buses include over 8,000 long-route vehicles, contract carriages, school, and tourist buses. If the statistics provided by the bus owners’ association are taken into consideration, around 1,800 buses plying across the state do not have permits and 5,800 are not paying taxes to the government.
Even as the state government has intensified enforcement against violation of traffic rules and launched a crackdown against vehicle owners for not adhering to the Motor Vehicles Act, the anomaly over the number of private buses has raised a series of questions.
How are those buses plying without a permit and not paying taxes? What is the condition of the buses?, Where are these buses plying? and What are road transport officials doing in those areas? The Transport department has a quick answer to this. “The statistics provided by the bus owners are not true. We impose fines whenever any bus is found plying without a permit or evading taxes,” said an official of the State Transport Authority (STA).
Apart from private buses, Odisha State Road Transport Corporation runs a fleet of over 650 buses. The STA official said around 1,600 buses will be introduced under LAccMI in areas where no or very low number of private buses ply.“How would LAccMI affect private buses if association members claim they have a fleet eight times the number of government buses” he wondered.
Sahoo, however, dared the government to find out the buses that do not have permits and evade taxes. “When the Transport department raised that only 8,200 buses pay taxes, we told them to find out those not paying,” he added.