Buses plying illegally from IGI airport

NEW DELHI: In an early Friday swoop, the Delhi Transport Corporation and State Transport department officials caught 12 unauthorised buses plying between the international airport and various towns in Punjab. The matter has been taken up with the airport authorities. Sources in transport department said the buses had been plying for the past couple of months."These buses, owned by private operators, were operating from international airport with permission from the airport authorities," a State Transport Authority (STA) official said. However, they did not have an STA permit. "The buses were being run in complete violation of the Motor Vehicle rules as they neither had stage carriage permits nor contract carriage permits," said DTC’s financial advisor and chief general manager Savitur Prasad. The buses apparently belong to a travel company called Indo-Canadian Transport, he said. A transport department official who went to the airport with the squad said: "The buses were plying on stage carriage permits procured from Punjab which are invalid in Delhi." The buses, with Punjab registration number plates, were used to ferry passengers arriving by early morning flights from places such as Dubai and Europe to various places in Punjab. "The destination in Punjab included places such as Jalandhar and Chandigarh and the charge was anything between Rs 700 and Rs 900," he said. Officials said the buses violated the laws with impunity. "The inter-state buses are allowed to pick up passengers only from designated inter-state bus terminus (ISBTs) such as Kashmere Gate, Anand Vihar and Sarai Kale Khan. They can’t pick up passengers at random from any point, be it the airport or Connaught Place," said Prasad. DTC, on its part, runs eight buses which ferry passengers from the airport terminals to the various ISBTs. Moreover, officials said the inter-state movement of vehicles is monitored by the inter-state government agreements. "There has to be a reciprocal act in existence, whereby Delhi and Punjab state governments should agree to ferry passengers in such a manner. We checked the records and there is no such agreement," a senior STA official said. Some officials also point to the security threat due to free movement of the drivers and conductors of these buses in the restricted areas of the airport. "They used to go around the airport premises to attract passengers to their buses," the official said. The joint inspection team of the STA and DTC had earlier caught several private buses, masquerading as DTC’s Ring Road service. The team had found that these buses were plying without adequate route or stage carriage permits.