NEW DELHI: Amid the ongoing debate over freebies, Delhi transport minister Kailash Gahlot on Thursday defended the city government’s decision to provide free ride in state buses to women passengers. He also said public transport should be treated as a “service” and not for making profit.
Speaking at a conference on electric mobility organised by the Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL) under the central government, Gahlot said, “There have been a lot of talks of how the state transport undertakings (STUs)are incurring huge losses. We don’t say the government is losing by running schools and hospitals. But when we talk about public transport, we speak about losses. We can’t expect public transport to make profit and hence the governments need to invest in them. Since the focus of public transport is to get more people to use them, the fare must be on the lower side.”
He was speaking at the event in the presence of Union minister Nitin Gadkari and G20 sherpa Amitabh Kant, who was earlier the Niti Aayog CEO. Gahlot also claimed that women have completed 57 crore free rides in Delhi government buses since they launched this scheme in 2019.
Union minister Gadkari, however, said that the STUs must be professionally managed and they can be profitable. Flagging that the annual loss of all STUs in the country is to the tune of Rs 20,000 crore, he spoke about revenue leakage due to paper tickets and of diesel as well. “We need to go for the new system where you don’t need a conductor to issue tickets. The STUs go for electric buses. These two will solve many problems. Even the cost to STUs is much less, if they go for electric buses,” he said.
The minister added that efforts should be made to discourage use of personal vehicles. Appreciating the London transport model, the minister said people want more comfort at a lower rate. He proposed use of card or QR code based entry-exit systems in place of physical ticket systems in the buses to prevent losses to the bus corporations and promote ease of travelling. “Currently, our public transport system is not good. People will shift to buses only when we give them better service and comfort,” he added.
The CESL recently procured 5,450 e-buses after aggregating the demand from states. Now, it has started the process to procure 50,000 e-buses. The aggregation of demand has resulted in better price discovery and has benefitted state governments.
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