Action sought against 'illegal' buses on Hospet route

bellary: the members of karnataka state road transport employees'' union have urged the district administration, police and regional transport authorities to take action against illegal operators plying buses on scheduled routes in bellary and hospet divisions. the union has threatened to launch an agitation if action was not taken to end the run of illegal buses immediately.congress leader, former minister and union president m. ramappa, working president syed hafeez and general secretary v.k. hiremath told reporters here on wednesday that the regional transport authority of hospet has granted 38 stage-carriage permits in the year 2000 to private operators in spite of protests by the north-eastern karnataka road transport corporation (nekrtc) as these routes overlap with those of the approved scheme of bellary. the approved scheme totally excludes private operators. what has raised the eyebrows is the fact that 32 of the 38 stage-carriage permits have been awarded to svk transports and the rest -- six -- to others. with this, the nekrtc is incurring losses to the tune of rs 1 lakh to rs 1.5 lakh every day, they said. as the situation is turning from bad to worse, the bellary unit of nekrtc has submitted a revision petition to the karnataka state transport appellate tribunal, bangalore, which has set aside the orders of granting 38 stage-carriage permits on april 6. despite the tribunal cancelling all the permits, the private operators are plying buses in the scheduled routes without any check, the members alleged. the private buses are plying illegally on the routes of kampli-hospet, kampli-kurugodu, kampli-shirur and kampli-gangavati, affecting the revenue of road transport corporation (rtc) buses. the union members urged the nekrtc central office, gulbarga, to permit the divisional controller of bellary unit to promote and fill up vacant posts, particularly the posts like assistant traffic inspectors, ticket collectors, assistants and assistant accountants. further, the union members demanded that vacant posts of 54 junior assistants be filled up by recruiting dependents of employees who have died in harness. ``these steps are necessary to reduce heavy workload that is the norm now in office.''''