JOIN USFor the cash-starved BMTC, the checking drives in its buses conducted periodically seem to be working in its favour by not only helping in bringing the offenders to book but also in raking in some moolah.
During the last financial year, the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) earned a whopping Rs 1.56 crore as penalty from passengers on various accounts such as ticketless travelling, men occupying seats reserved for women, besides collecting a pilferage amount of Rs one crore.
Officials of the BMTC say that drives which were intensified in the past to check various offences committed both by its own crew as well as the commuters are bearing fruit.
Not only the pilferage amount has been reduced in the past three years, but also the number of trips checked by the staff has gone up.
In 2011-12, the checking staff conducted checks on 2.5 lakh bus trips and booked a total number of 66,000 cases and penalised 1.12 lakh passengers.
The next financial year, 2012-13, the numbers rose to 2.8 lakh bus trips which were checked resulting in 54,914 cases being booked and 94,000 passengers penalised for various offences.
During the financial year 2013-14, the total number of trips checked went up to 3.3 lakh, wherein 54,866 cases being booked and 1.12 lakh passengers were penalised.
From March 2013 till May 2014, as many as 15,169 male passengers were penalised for occupying seats reserved for women and the BMTC has collected a penalty of 15.16 lakh from them.
Officials of the BMTC say that the pilferage amount which has been brought down from Rs 22.6 lakh in 2011-12 to Rs 15.7 lakh in 2013-14 is a huge success of the checking drives wherein the bus crew is now been aware of the consequences that await them.
Speaking with Deccan Herald, BMTC M D Anjum Parvez said, “For once, the checking drive has created awareness among the travelling public that ticketless travelling will get them penalised heavily.
There are two kinds of checking drives in BMTC — one is alighting checking at non-stages and another is line checking at stages. People should understand that ticketless travelling is not only a loss to the BMTC but also the burden gets transferred to those who buy tickets sincerely.
Because of the periodical checks, both the staff and the people are aware that they can be checked randomly any moment and the fear of being caught by the vigilance staff has brought down the pilferage amount,” he said.
He added that as far as the seats reserved for women are concerned, the BMTC is committed to women’s safety.
“Fine of Rs 100 has been introduced a year ago for the men occupying seats reserved for women in the buses,” he said.
He said that on a daily basis, about 20 teams conduct random checks in buses and twice in a week, the heads of departments also join the team in conducting surprise checks.
In fact, statistics reveal that the number of Outstanding Red Mark Cases (ORMC) and Red Mark Cases (RMC), against the bus crew have also gone down from 2,200 cases in 2011-12 to 1,571 cases in 2013-14 and from 7,924 cases in 2011-12 to 5,000 cases in 2013-14, respectively.