Vehicular traffic was disrupted for sometime on the National Highway-16 at Maddilapalem as the activists of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) staged separate protests against the the State government’s decision to increase RTC bus fares.
BJP activists led by former MLA P. Vishnu Kumar Raju, city president M. Nagendra staged a demonstration.
“Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has reneged on the promise he had made during his padayatra before the elections that the YSRCP, if voted to power, would not hike the bus fare,” said Mr. Vishnu Kumar Raju.
Meanwhile, the CPI activists staged a protest at the Telugu Thalli statue on the highway.
Party’s State assistant secretary J.V. Satyanarayana Murthy said that the decision to hike the bus fares by 10 paise a km for ordinary services and 20 paise a km for express services would add additional burden on the common man, given the steep rise in the prices of essential commodities.
‘A burden on commoners’
“The government, instead of looking for other avenues to generate revenue, has chosen to pass the burden to the commoners. It is time the government insisted on the Centre to extend concessions on GST as was being done in the case of railways. The hike in bus fare must be revoked immediately,” he said.
CPI city secretary M. Pydiraju and leaders A. Vimala, Sk. Rehaman, G. Vamana Murthy and J.D. Naidu were among those who participated in the protest.
