NMC: Transport Committee proposes Rs 277.84 crore budget for 2019-20
   Date :19-Jun-2019

 
Jitendra alias Bunty Kukde, Chairman of Transport Committee, presenting transport budget for 2019-20 to Pradeep Pohane, Chairman of Standing Committee, on Tuesday. Other corporators also are seen.
 
 
Staff Reporter:
 
All diesel buses to be run on CNG
 
45 new midi-buses to be added to fleet
 
Free travel for Divyangs, women family members of military and paramilitary martyrs
 
Five electric buses to be run only for women by clubbing it with ‘Tejaswini’ scheme
 
NMC to launch ‘Chalo App’ for e-ticket booking and providing information about city bus service to people
 
Scrapped buses to be converted into ‘BioBus Toilets’ for citizens
 

 
 
 
Jitendra alias Bunty Kukde, Chairman of Transport Committee of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), presented the transport budget for the year 2019-20 with the stated objective of ‘eco-friendly, pollution-free’ municipal transport. He presented the budget of Rs 277.84 crore to Pradeep Pohane, Chairman of Standing Committee, on Tuesday. In the budget, Kukde has incorporated several announcements including that of converting all diesel buses into those run on CNG or compressed natural gas. “It is the idea of Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways. Apart from the city buses, we wish to run the official vehicles of Mayor, all office-bearers and officials of NMC on CNG in the current financial year,” Kukde told reporters. The budget is of Rs 277.84 crore.
 
The size increases to Rs 278.56 crore with the opening balance of Rs 72 lakh. The estimated expenditure for 2019-20 is Rs 278.41 crore. Thus, he said, there will be Rs 15.25 lakh surplus at the end of the current financial year in March 2020. At present, city bus service has three operators who are running 236 buses, 150 midi-buses, and 45 mini buses. Soon, Kukde said, 45 new midi-buses will be added to the fleet. For the purpose, an allocation of Rs 5.60 crore has been made in the budget for 2019-20. For the operators, NMC has taken up development of 10.80 acres of land in Wathoda. Besides, 20,000 sq mtrs of land near Shri Mahalaxmi Jagdamba Devsthan, Koradi, is being developed by Nagpur Improvement Trust/Nagpur Metropolitan Region Development Authority.
 
 
With these, city buses will get an additional bus depot. As far as bus-stops are concerned, 100 new shelters have been created to replace the old ones. Other bus-stops are being constructed as per the new design, on build-operate-transfer basis. M/s Sign Post India Pvt Ltd is constructing new bus-stops in the city, Kukde said. Once the work on all bus-stops is completed, NMC will get royalty of Rs 50 lakh per annum from 2021-22. Transport Committee has made provision of Rs 2 crore for installing water ATMs near bus-stops in crowded localities. Informing about the proposed initiatives, the Chairman of Transport Committee said that free travel facility would be offered to Divyang commuters. At present, they are charged one-fourth of the fares.
 
Further, NMC will issue ‘Mi Jijau’ cards to women family members (mother, wife, daughter, sister) of military or paramilitary martyrs to enable them to travel for free in city buses. The scheme will be rolled out on August 15 this year, he said. For commuters, NMC has decided to develop a mobile phone application ‘Chalo App’. It will be made available soon and people may download it for free to get information about city bus schedule, stoppages, fares, etc. Using the application, people may even opt for e-ticket booking, Kukde announced. Besides, NMC is preparing for launching a common mobility card to enable seamless travel in Metro Rail as well as city bus service.
 
Asked about the initiative ‘Tejaswini’ announced last year under which buses only for women were to be run, Kukde replied that these buses would be launched in 2019-20. He said, “All these five buses to be launched soon will run on electricity. These will be mini-buses. To enable the roll-out of electric buses, we have made a provision of Rs 3 crore in the budget for solar power generation.” The ‘Tejaswini’ buses could not be launched in the year gone by because of several issues including lack of benchmarking in bidding process, changes effected in bid document as bids received lukewarm response, etc. Now, he added, everything is in place and the buses will be launched soon. About the old buses that have been scrapped and are out of operation, Kukde said that those would be used for ‘BioBus Toilets’. The scrapped buses would be refitted as a pilot project under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and converted into separate toilets for men and women.
 
These toilets will be made available for passengers in various parts of the city, he added. NMC to conduct maintenance audit of city buses: Kukde Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) will be conducting maintenance audit of all the city buses. The decision has been taken following the reports of frequent breakdown of buses that affected the commuters, said Jitendra alias Bunty Kukde, Chairman of Transport Committee. According to him, the officials in NMC’s workshop will conduct the audit. The buses found in bad condition will be taken off the roads, he said in reply to a question.