Drivers of aging Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation buses light the way on their own

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: In the dead of night, on long, unforgiving routes towards Karnataka and Telangana, Maharashtra’s state transport buses push forward through stretches of darkness that their own headlights can barely cut through. Behind the wheel, drivers are not just steering aging machines, they are compensating for them, often at their own cost and risk.

With dim, worn-out halogen headlights on buses that are over a decade old, visibility on highways and narrow rural roads becomes a gamble. To keep passengers (and themselves) safe, drivers are forced to improvise. Many carry personal LED lights, rigging makeshift fittings onto buses before setting off into the dark, only to remove them once their shift ends.

“The old MSRTC buses have weak headlights that barely show the road,” said a conductor on the Pune-Mumbai route. “Many drivers buy LED lights themselves. It’s for their safety and for passengers.”

These stopgap solutions have become a routine now. Drivers and conductors say the official lighting systems simply do not meet the demands of long-distance night travel.

On the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar-Gulbarga route, passenger Nilesh Kulkarni described how buses halt at Dharashiv — where wide national highways give way to narrower roads — for drivers to install additional lights. “It takes time to fit these lights, and passengers are forced to wait,” he said, and added, “But drivers say it’s needed to see the road clearly.”

This reveals a deeper structural issue within MSRTC, the backbone of rural Maharashtra’s transport system, operating a fleet of around 12,600 buses. Many of these vehicles are long past their prime.

Divisional controller Pramod Nehul said, “The last major bus purchase was around 12 years ago. So most buses are about 10 to 12 years old.” While new buses are being inducted gradually, the pace has not kept up with the system’s needs.

Announcements of reform have offered hope, but there is little immediate relief on the ground. In Feb, transport minister Pratap Sarnaik outlined plans to procure 25,000 buses, including 8,300 in the first phase. Yet a parallel push to induct 5,150 e-buses has faltered significantly. Against a target of adding 215 buses each month under a Feb 2024 agreement, only 738 have been delivered so far, leaving the modernisation plan largely stalled.

Shrirang Barge, general secretary of the Maharashtra ST Employees Congress, said, “Even after extensions and leniency, the supplier has failed to deliver the promised buses.”

Unions say the delay has serious financial consequences for an already struggling transport utility. A penalty of about ₹15 crore is on the cards, while losses continue to mount. “The delay has caused a loss of ₹161 crore so far,” one union leader said. “MSRTC is already losing ₹1.6 crore every day. Penalties are justified.”

Repeated attempts to get a response from MSRTC’s top management went unanswered.

For now, it seems, drivers will continue to navigate dark roads in outdated buses, relying on self-devised fixes.