The Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) has urged the Centre to provide an additional 1,000 buses to it under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) for Himachal to improve its services in the hill state. Addressing a press conference here today, Transport Minister GS Bali said of the 1,000 buses, the purchase of which had been approved by the state government, 500 were likely to be delivered by Diwali. “We will shortly submit a detailed project to the Centre under the JNNURM for getting funds for purchase of another 1,000 buses for being plied in 12 clusters,” he disclosed. He said several decisions had been taken by the Board of Directors of the HRTC and the Bus Stand Management Authority, which met here. He announced that the authority had decided to construct 12 new bus stands at various locations, including Dhalli and Lakkar Bazaar in Shimla, Manali, Chamba, Kullu, Manikaran, Baddi, Nurpur, Palampur and Nahan. “The new bus stands will be constructed in the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode or Build-Transfer Operate (BOT) basis for which expression of interest will be invited shortly,” he stated. He added that the builders of two bus stands at Hamirpur and Una had been given one last chance to complete work or else fresh expression of interest would be invited. Bali said there had been an increase of 10 per cent in the revenue of the HRTC during the last eight months and the mileage per km had also gone up by 10 points. “We have decided to discontinue12 deluxe buses which have outlived their life span, keeping in mind the security of the passengers,” he said. The minister said a committee had been constituted to review the loss-making and overlapping routes, which would submit its report within 10 days. He said to give a boost to e-ticketing, 5 per cent concession would be given on all tickets booked in advance and also to group bookings in luxury buses like Volvo.