Soon, electric buses to ply in Kolkata: Adhikari

The state transport department is going through a proposal of announcing electric buses in the city after the introduction of air-conditioned mini buses on Monday.

Suvendu Adhikari, the state Transport minister, said: "We have received proposals to allow plying of electric buses in the city. We are going through the plan to ply buses that are also already operational in some cities in the country."

Ten air-conditioned mini buses have been flagged off from two separate programmes on Monday. Besides Adhikari, state IT minister Bratya Basu, Swarnakamal Saha, vice-chairman of West Bengal Transport Corporation and Principal Secretary of the Transport department Alapan Bandyopadhyay were present in the flag off event. Taking a dig at the erstwhile Left Front government, Adhikari further added: "Loans were taken to buy buses during the Left Front regime. It led to a debt of Rs 132 crore as buses were not bought under planned heads. As a result, still the Transport department is going on clearing the loan. Since the buses are now bought under planned heads, we have managed to improve the work of the department manifold."

Besides taking up projects to improve the transport system in the state, the department has also funded some concerning the police force to ensure minimum accidents happen on roads. The air-conditioned mini-buses that were introduced on Monday will be plying from Kolkata Airport to Esplanade and Behala Joka to Esplanade. Five buses will be plying on each of the routes.

The fare of the bus has been fixed in such a way that maximum people can avail the service. Meanwhile, the extension work of the Metro service is getting slowed down due to 208 houses in Kamarhati Municipality. It is learnt that the transport department has urged the civic body to take necessary steps to ensure that the work gets executed at the earliest.