DTC fleet small, move to remove Bluelines may hit court hurdle

NEW DELHI: The transport department spent Tuesday crunching numbers , trying to justify the minister’s ‘‘ knee jerk’ ’ announcement to ban Bluelines after December 14. What the department will essentially tell the court is that till about six-seven months back the total number of buses on the road were around 5000, of which 2900 were owned by DTC. Since then DTC has added over 3,500 buses to its fleet.

Meanwhile, chief minister Sheila Dikshit made it clear on Tuesday that her government was determined to banish Blueline buses from December . She said the Blueline buses had been involved in too many accidents and the government would not let them to continue. ‘‘ The Blueline buses alone are to be blamed for (our) decision . They forced us to make the decision. We cannot allow them to continue,’’ said the chief minister.

There will be no hardships to commuters, she insisted. ‘‘ The DTC is competent enough to provide a punctual, reliable and comfortable public transport system in the city. Also, the Delhi Metro is also available ,’’ said the CM.
The cabinet has asked the transport department to present the proposal for the next four bus clusters — the letter of intent for the first cluster has already been awarded within a week’s time.

A senior official said that court is likely to stop the move to phase out Bluelines on the ground that the city, even with the strengthened DTC fleet, remains woefully short of 11,000 buses that it requires. The move will have an adverse impact on the families of Blueline owners and the court is likely to deliberate on it.

‘‘ Our calculations are ready. Till about six-seven months back there were around 2900 DTC buses and 2000 Bluelines in the capital. Right now our own fleet strength is 6675 — even if we consider that on any given day only 80% of the old DTC fleet of 2900 buses are on the road. This is enough to meet the city’s requirement . Also, in the last one year, nearly 60km network has been added to Metro lines,’’ said the officer.

Though the cabinet has asked the transport department to hasten up the process of allotment of bus clusters , sources say the proposal for the next four of these clusters has already been sent out by the department and it has been waiting for the cabinet to take it up for close to two months now.

The letter of intent for the first cluster that will have around 230 buses was awarded four-five months ago and sources say even if the minister’s deadline of November-end is not met, the buses would be on the road by March at the most.