Thousands of regular travellers, including students, from border areas of Kerala to Dakshina Kannada district, particularly Mangaluru, are forced to endure a lot of difficulties every day owing to lack of passenger train and inter-State bus services between Kerala and Karnataka.
Students and regular travellers from Uppala, Manjeshwara, Hosangadi, Kunjathur and other places are forced to travel in buses — private as well as government-run — till Talapady on the Kerala-Karnataka border. They have to alight at Talapady, and board a different bus — private or government-run — for their onward journey towards Mangaluru and other parts of Dakshina Kannada.
The Karnataka government is yet to allow inter-State bus services.
Kavyashree, an undergraduate student of Besant College in Mangaluru, who was waiting for a connecting bus at Talapady on November 16, told The Hindu that she used to travel by Cheravathur passenger train during pre-COVID-19 times. “I spent a total of ₹20 on my daily commute that used to take a maximum of 45 minutes in each direction. Now, I have to shell out more than ₹100 each day for bus fare, and also wait at Talapady for a connecting service, and I am forced to travel in crowded buses,” she said.
Mohammed Suheb, a student of Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management near Mangaluru, travels from Hosangadi in Kerala to Mangaluru daily by road. He is forced to change buses at Talapady. “When things have drastically improved and classes from LKG have resumed, there is no rationale in barring inter-State bus services. Almost every senior student is vaccinated, and everyone wears a face mask,” he said.
Ganapathi Educational Institutions Correspondent Mahesh Bondal told The Hindu that not less than 2,000 students from areas bordering Kerala travel to Mangaluru every day to pursue courses in St. Aloysius, University College, Government First Grade College, Besant Institutions and several other private colleges. His institution also runs a high school and a PU college at Someshwara near Ullal railway station. Despite repeated pleas to the railways, passenger train services are yet to resume, thereby forcing students and parents to incur a high expenditure on the daily commute.
Even though the respective RTCs issue student passes, they are of little use as students have to change buses at the border, said an official of KSRTC.
Social activist Gopalakrishna Bhat sees the chaos every morning and evening at Talapady when hundreds of students jostle for space inside cramped buses. They spend ₹100 to ₹150 each day on commuting as against a maximum of ₹30 by a passenger train in the pre-COVID-19 days. “The railways should have resumed passenger train services when it commenced normal train operations from November 15,” Mr. Bhat said.
