The 360-odd all India tourist omnibuses (AITOB) operating inter-State services from the key southern cities to the State and back resumed their services on Monday after a week.
The AITOBs will run as contract carriages with fares that was prevailing on June 21 and a 12-13% increase in fares during weekends and holidays as recommended by M. Ramachandran Fare Revision committee in its interim report.
The AITOBs will have to operate the inter-State services to Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and other places and back as contract carriages from ‘end-to-end’ on approved fares. Only the passengers who have booked in advance for travelling to a destination will be allowed to board the bus enroute.
The fleet operators will have to forward the list of the passengers to the Regional Transport Officer, Enforcement, and the Nodal Officer to pass on to the MVIs of the check post for verification and checking in the MVD’s inter-State check posts, if needed. The operators agreed not to transport goods in the underarm belly of the vehicles.
The inter-State services were restored by 3 p.m. by the Interstate Bus Owners Association-Kerala (IBOA), the apex body of the AITOB operators in the State, following the talks the IBOA leaders had with Principal Secretary, Transport , K.R. Jyothilal in the Secretariat.
The AITOB operators had withdrawn the buses to the State from June 24 in protest against the alleged harassment by the Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) during the last two months in the guise of Operation Night Riders.
Mr. Jyothilal told the meeting that the checking by the MVD Enforcement squad that commenced following the assault on the passengers by the crew of Suresh Kallada Travels at Vytilla and other instances of harassment would continue.
The fares would continue till the Fare Revision committee headed by former High Court judge M. Ramachandran and former director of Natpac T. Elangovan, K. Niyati and State Transport Commissioner Sudhesh Kumar, the member-secretary, submitted its final report and the government took a call on the report, official sources said.
The government’s intervention comes in the wake of the Bus Operators Confederation of India (BOCI)’s president Prasanna Patwardhan and vice president Babu Panicker meeting with NCP supremo Sharad Pawar last week in Pune. The BOCI is the national organisation of the operators.
The IBOA State president, Manoj Padikkal, said the services had resumed and that they would be keeping a list of the passengers travelling in the bus. “The tickets will be closed half an hour before the bus commences its journey and it will be forwarded to the RTO as agreed in the meeting,” he said.
Transport Commissioner Sudhesh Kumar, Joint Transport Commissioner Rajeev Puthalath, Mr. Patwardhan, Mr. Panicker and Mr. Padikkal participated in the talks.
