Delay in pact by Maha hurdle for KSRTC buses to Guj, Raj

Private players cash in on demand from natives of two states in Bengaluru

The long-drawn-out plans of the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) to extend bus services to Gujarat and Rajasthan have made little progress. The Maharashtra government is yet to clear the proposal to allow buses to ply via its territory.

The Corporation officials say the delay was not from KSRTC. To provide connectivity to Gujarat and Rajasthan, the Maharashtra government has to sign an agreement to allow KSRTC buses to ply through Maharashtra.

 This has not been done yet, the officials said. The proposal has been pending for over an year now. The matter will be discussed with the higher authorities and we will request the Transport minister to take it up with his Maharashtra counterpart, the officials said.

The KSRTC plans to launch services to Surat, Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, Jodhpur, Jaipur, and Jaisalmer.

Presently, the farthest route the KSRTC buses ply is till Mumbai (from the City) covering a distance of 984 km, and Bengaluru-Shirdi route, spanning 1,012 km, but many private players operating from the City have been plying their buses to Gujarat and Mumbai, cashing in on the opportunity in the absence of a government player. The officials said that in the past, long-distance buses were limited only to Mumbai, which was a 24-hour journey, before the golden quadrilateral was constructed. The distance can now be covered in less than 20 hours.

While the distance from Bengaluru to Jaipur is 2,000 km, to Jaisalmer, it is 2,025 km and these two bus routes will be the longest by any state run transport corporation in the country.

The KSRTC officials said the City was home to many from Rajasthan and Gujarat. There has been a long-pending demand to start the services from here, which prompted them to moot the proposal, the official said.

Ruchi Kedia, a native of Jaipur settled in the City with her husband for more than a decade now, said, “The trains to Rajasthan are always running full and the journey takes 47 hours. If the trains run late even by a few hours, which usually is the case, the journey gets longer and tiresome.”