The Delhi High Court on Wednesday pulled up the city government for not buying adequate low floor disabled-friendly CNG buses in the last 10 years on the grounds that their cost was unrealistic.
A Bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C.Hari Shankar questioned the basis for the city government’s assessment that the cost cited by Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland for supplying the buses was “unrealistic, exorbitant and unjustifiable”.
“For the last 10 years you have justified not buying low floor buses saying the price was unrealistic without saying what is realistic or carrying out an empirical study,” the Bench said. The court made Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland as parties in the case to enable them to inform it about the costs of their low floor CNG buses.
The Bench also cautioned that the city government officials could be held in contempt and sent to jail for not complying with the Supreme Court’s 1998 direction to augment its bus fleet from 5,000 to 10,000.
