Police, Transport Department and Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) authorities are ensuring that buses on the Coimbatore – Mettupalayam section are entering the Corporation’s new bus stand on Mettupalayam Road in compliance to the directions of the Madras High Court.
Police have put up a flex banner at the bus stand entrance directing the buses plying on this sector to enter the bus stand. When the Corporation’s latest state of the art modern bus stand was commissioned, the private bus operators moved the High Court and obtained a stay from terminating the buses at Mettupalayam Road bus stand. This resulted in the bus stand lying in disuse for some time.
The private bus operators said that by terminating the buses at Mettuplayam Road bus stand, they stand to lose 5.2 route km resulting in collection loss as well. The bus stand was aimed at decongesting the core city areas and Gandhipuram by terminating the buses operating towards Mettupalayam, Coonoor, Kotagiri, Udhagamandalam, Gudalur and beyond. There are 31 private buses on this section and a little over 100 TNSTC buses are being operated on this section on a daily basis.
The Transport Department filed a counter seeking to vacate the stay order. The court passed an order allowing the operators to ply their services up to Gandhipuram but with a condition that buses while plying on either direction should enter the Mettupalayam Road bus stand for enabling the passengers to embark and disembark. But, compliance to this was initially lacking.
Subsequently, the police posted personnel at the bus stand to regulate the buses into the bus stand and the transport department also posted Motor Vehicle Inspectors to monitor the compliance to the court directive. For violating the directive, as many as eight cases were registered against bus operators till date.
