April Fool’s Day will spring a cruel joke on millions of Delhiites this year. Thatis because they may find themselves literally left on the streets with only a handful ofpublic transport buses plying on the city roads to take them to work and back. Even themost optimistic estimate is that Delhi’s fleet of buses will be downsized from 12,000to a mere 500.
The Supreme Court deadline of April 1 to convert all buses (commercial vehicles)running on Delhi roads from diesel to compressed natural gas (cng) has triggered panicamong the Capital’s citizens. But the utter chaos in the administration can be gaugedby the fact that with less than a fortnight left for the imposition of the ban, the stategovernment is still doing rounds of the apex court praying for an extension of thedeadline. Ironically, the court passed an order to this effect almost three years ago.
The state has already suffered a dressing down on cng with the court passing severestrictures on the lax manner in which it has dealt with the cng issue while rejecting itsplea for extending the deadline on two occasions. Now the state has once again pinned itshopes on the March 19 hearing, when its plea for buying more time again comes up beforethe court.
While the Delhi Transport Corporation (dtc)—the official public transportundertaking—has 1,500 buses running under it, the largest chunk of commuters iscatered to by private operators, plying under the dtc, as independent Blueline buses or aschartered services. All of these, totalling over 10,000, will go off the roads in April.With a new cng bus being very costly at around Rs 16 lakh—almost double the price ofa diesel bus—and the cost of conversion reaching up to Rs 3.5 lakh, most operatorsplan to abandon their services in Delhi and sell or operate the buses in neighbouringstates.
On the other hand, the state-owned dtc is still struggling with procedures andtechnical snags in acquiring a fresh fleet of cng buses. "So far, we have 145 cngbuses on the roads. We hope to reach 500 by April," says dtc chairman and managingdirector Rakesh Mehta. But this is hardly a solution.
The CNG impasse is now serious cause for concern for the city’s 14-millionpopulace, much of it dependent on public transport. But the worst hit will be students.Most schools have already notified parents to make alternative arrangements for theirwards. "We’re really worried. Some of us are organising a van for our children.It’s very expensive and not very safe either," says a worried Yashpal Bhaskar.
The multi-million-rupee cng issue is not as simple as it may seem. Besides theenvironment, court orders and administrative delays, there are several other crucialaspects which raise a stink about the entire affair. Consider this:
- Indraprastha Gas Ltd, the firm meant to provide the cng filling facilities in the city, was given till March 2000 to set up 85 filling stations. One year beyond that deadline, it has managed to put up just 47.
- The preconditions for the global tender floated by dtc in March this year for conversion of 1,000 buses to cng allegedly leaves only one company, Nugas Technologies, as a successful bidder. The owner of the company is believed to be close to the Congress, the ruling party in Delhi.
- CNG use is still being tested worldwide. Interestingly, a TERI study last year had stressed the need for field-based trials before the induction of new fuel technology.
- There are no guidelines concerning emission and safety norms for cng vehicles.
The net result: chaos. "It will take at least one more year," says Delhitransport minister Parvez Hashmi. "Though the court order came in July 1998, we gotthe clearance from the Union surface transport ministry as late as February 2000. Wecan’t do anything," he adds. The dtc chairman makes his stand clear: "I amonly responsible for my 2,000 buses." So even as the old game of buck-passing beginsto be played all over again, Delhiites can now only imagine the nightmare of making dowith 500 buses. For a city notorious for its poor public transport, this sure is a bodyblow.
