AAP govt. selling DTC buses instead of augmenting fleet: BJP

The Delhi BJP on Friday accused the AAP government of “selling DTC buses” instead of making attempts to add more vehicles to the Capital’s public bus fleet.

Citing an RTI reply, Delhi BJP president Adesh Gupta said that instead of buying buses for the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), as many as 2,000 buses from the public transporter’s fleet were sold off.

“Arvind Kejriwal promised that if he came to power, 11,000 new buses and electric buses would come. But since then the number has only come down to 3,760,” Mr. Gupta said.

“It has come to the fore through an RTI that in the past seven years instead of buying new buses, the Kejriwal government has sold over 2,000 existing ones,” he also said.

Leader of the Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri said in 2015 the Centre decided to purchase 40 electronic buses and said it would bear the entire expenses but the Delhi government rejected the offer.

‘In bad shape’

“Now transportation is in such a bad shape that most of its 3,754 buses have already outlived its age in September last. They are an operational risk and should have been taken off the roads and replaced by new ones,” Mr. Bidhuri said.

“In a letter by then Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, Mr. Kejriwal was told about this but even then not a single bus was taken. Now by getting just one electric bus Mr. Kejriwal is busy spending crores of rupees on its publicity,” the LOP also said.