Long-haul bus operators are a law unto themselves

The inferno that incinerated 45 innocent lives on a bus in Palem of Mahbubnagar district during the wee hours of the fateful October 30 was one of the ghastliest accidents in the country. The Jabbar Travels bus which was speeding at 130 km per hour, with no emergency exit, a tired driver who had logged 48 hours already, a callous Road Transport Authority that had allowed a bus with old number to ply on the same route for almost a year, the national highway authorities that built the road with a protruding wall of a culvert in the middle of the road.... and above all the system that encourages all of us to opt for private buses over the government buses -- all these contributed to the inferno.

The ill-fated bus, though operated by Jabbar Travels, was actually registered in the name of Diwakar Road Lines owned by family members of former minister J C Diwakar Reddy of the Congress. The vehicle, registered in the name of JC Uma Reddy of Anantapur, was said to be on lease with Shakeel Ahmed of M/S Jabbar Travels, Bangalore. Even though the vehicle is currently on the rolls of RTO, Bangalore since October 2011, and Jabbar Travels has been plying the Bangalore-Hyderabad bus with an Andhra Pradesh registration. According to Anantapur RTA authorities who gave an NOC to Jabbar Travels for transfer of vehicle to Karnataka a year ago, Jabbar Travels hadn’t done it. Which means along with Jabbar Travels, JC Uma Reddy will be equally responsible for the incident as the vehicle continues to be in her name.

Jabbar Travels, a very sought after private operator in the Deccan belt of Karnataka-Hyderabad-Mumbai sector, contributed to the chaos as they have no final list of passengers at the booking office of Jabbar Travels near Kalasipalyam bus stand in Bangalore or Afzalgunj in Hyderabad as anxious relatives and friends waited for confirmation. So there was confusion over the list of passengers. Office staff made repeated attempts to reach the mobile numbers of passengers in their records. While some calls went unattended, some were received by those who had booked tickets for their relatives. Archana K, sister S Venkatesh, a victim, said she rushed to the travel operator’s office when she saw the news flash on TV. “The office was closed. When it opened, it was of no help either. The staff was completely in the dark,” she said.

The initial manifest available with the driver showed seven empty seats out of the seating capacity of 42 excluding the cleaner and driver. How come the death toll rose to 45 is something that the RTA of both Karnataka and AP have to answer. The Act that governs private buses stipulates that these buses should not be used as stage carriers, in an effort to leave that right exclusively in the hands of state-run transport corporations. The curious case of one Naga Sravanthi of Hyderabad whose name was not there in the final and corrected manifest submitted by Jabbar to Mahbubnagar police even after a day of the accident shows how careless the travel agents could be. “My daughter actually booked her ticket in another bus operated by SRS travels. The booking agent made her sit in Jabbar bus at the last minute. For almost a day we did not know that she was burnt alive in the Palem accident,” ISV Prasad, father of Sravanthi says. Could Jameel Jabbar, one of the owners of Jabbar Travels who says that there were 36 passengers when his bus left from Bangalore at 10.30 pm but some more boarded en route, console the grieving family?

In Andhra Pradesh, the state with the largest fleet of 21,500 buses under APSRTC followed by TNSTC with 20,200 and combined strength of  KSRTC, NEKRTC and NWKRTC with 16200, a few private operators virtually rule the high revenue long-haul sectors that include, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Goa, Bangalore, Mumbai and Shirdi. However, more than 170 private and state buses ply on the Bangalore-Hyderabad route alone, which is one of the busiest roads in the country. At least 80 of the total number of buses are run by private companies.

The AP RTA officials agree that private bus operators are a law unto themselves. Operators such as Kesineni, Diwakar, SVR, Jabbar, Sri Kaleswari and Kaveri are so influential that lower-level officials do not dare either to carry out inspections or take adverse decisions despite violation of the rules. "They are so powerful and field level officials are nothing before them. We can survive either by compromising or by ignoring them,” admitted a senior official in Nellore on the condition of anonymity.

According to RTA data, private operators run more than 2,000 buses daily ferrying about 80,000 people to their destinations regularly.  Officials conduct check-ups only when a new vehicle is brought to the office for registration, and the certificate is valid for two years. Though officials should conduct annual inspections thereafter, private operators manage these checks through various means. Due to high-level political contacts of the private operators, officials at field level do not muster courage to confront them. If someone does confront them they succumb to the pressures from political circles. As per rules, buses should be equipped with fire-fighting mechanism. glass-breaking tools are supposed to be placed at every window, and there should be enough exit routes with proper display. Moreover, air-conditioned buses are completely closed. Due to lack of proper checking, private operators are even allowing inflammable material in the luggage boxes.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has taken the incident seriously and requested the NATRIP under the Ministry of Heavy Industry to investigate, and suggest ways to prevent repetition of such incidents. The state government has also decided to increase its APSRTC fleet to mop up extra rush. The AP State Road Transport Corporation is purchasing 737 buses worth about Rs 332 crore, for which it is preparing to float tenders within two months.