Delhi Turncoat Corporation
Despite making a mess of converting its diesel buses to CNG, the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) is more complacent than ever. It has shed all responsibility of augmenting the bus fleet to 10,000. Summarily washing his hands of any responsibility, Rakesh Mehta, chairman-cum-managing director of DTC, says the corporation hasn't operated a large fleet of buses.
"Since DTC's inception, it has never operated more than 20 per cent of the public transport buses in Delhi. Since 1993, the maximum number of buses that the DTC has operated is 2,000-2,500. The rest are Blue Line buses, contract carriages and school buses. DTC now operates about 900 diesel buses that are less than eight years old. We plan to increase this to 2000. The rest will have to happen in the private sector.' says Mehta. This, says DTC, can happen by May 2001. Even if the Supreme Court grants an extension of deadline to DTC, there is no guarantee that the next deadline will be met, a prime example of how the Indian public sector is devoid of accountability.
DTC finally submitted to the Supreme Court that it has placed orders for 2,000 CNG buses with Ashok Leyland and TELCO. But the corporation says it that these buses will ply on the roads of Delhi only by December 2001. DTC's problem now is building the bodies on the chasses.
Mehta had earlier contended that if DTC gets all the bus chasses in four-five months, all buses would come on the road by 2002. The bus manufacturers don't want to build the body as this would attract an additional excise duty of 16 per cent, increasing the price of the bus.
One positive move has come from Ashok Leyland, which tied up with some builders of bus bodies to set up facilities near their factory in Alwar, Rajasthan, barely three hours from Delhi. But this move hasn't really taken off as yet.