Soon, 20 more CNG buses in South Bengal districts

Kolkata: Soon, twenty more CNG buses will be introduced in South Bengal districts to reduce pollution. The state Environment department will be funding the project.

The state Environment minister, Suvendu Adhikari, who is also the state's Transport minister, said steps have been taken to introduce more number of CNG buses. Around 20 more such buses will be operating in different parts of the

South Bengal districts.

The CNG buses are environment friendly and help to curb the level of pollution in the state. It may be mentioned that the state Transport department has a plan to operate CNG buses all over the state and will be done in phases. Each bus costs around Rs 1 crore. But the maintenance cost of the CNG buses is considerably much less than those of the diesel run ones. At the same time, the cost of fuel will be much cheaper as gas costs lesser than diesel.

The state government had earlier introduced CNG buses in Asansol and Durgapur. At present, 30 CNG buses ply in Asansol and Durgapur. The project has become immensely successful and now the state government has taken steps to introduce more number of CNG buses.

Several steps were taken in the past seven years to increase the number of buses so that people do not have to wait for a long time to get a bus to reach their destinations. Initiatives for introducing environment friendly vehicles were also taken. The state Transport department is giving all support for the promotion of electric vehicles and decision has been taken to allow owners of the electric vehicles to recharge their vehicles at the charging points, where the electric buses of the West Bengal Transport Corporation

will be recharged.

They will be charged for the electricity cost under the "no gain no loss" policy as it has been done for promotion of e-vehicles. The state government will also introduce 80 electric buses by August.