After a gap of almost six months, the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) is resuming services to Maharashtra, one of the States facing high prevalence of COVID-19 positive cases. From September 22, buses will run to the neighbouring State from Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Davangere and other points from Karnataka.
A senior KSRTC official said, “After the outbreak of the pandemic, interstate operations were stopped in March. The Karnataka government was the first State in the southern part of the country to initiate resumption of interstate services. KSRTC is operating buses to Andhra Pradesh, Goa and a few services to Kerala.”
In the initial days of resuming services to Maharashtra, KSRTC plans to run only a few buses to popular destinations such as Mumbai, Pune, Shirdi and others. “We are planning for 25 services initially and the number will be increased depending on the demand. The services include AC buses,” said the official.
When asked about why there is a delay in resuming services to Telangana and Tamil Nadu, the official said, “There are some disputes between road transport corporations of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh that are affecting resumption of interstate services. Basically, it is the fallout of bifurcation of the State. They are holding talks at the government level to resolve issues on how many interstate services they should run. Once that is done, the KSRTC will operate buses to destinations such as Hyderabad.”
He added that the corporation has received a positive response from Tamil Nadu on running bus services.
Intrastate services of KSRTC have gradually increased over the weeks; it is currently operating close to 5,000 buses out of 8,200 buses. The average revenue generated is ₹4.5 crore per day and recently it had also recorded revenue of ₹5.09 crore. “Interstate services are one of the major sources of revenue generation. We hope that gradually the number will increase on these routes too,” said the official.
