Hyderabad: State Road Transport Corporation bus services among Telangana and Andhra Pradesh will continue from Monday night, following a gap of over seven months, as the two Telugu states consented to an agreement in this regard.
The two neighbours, at last, settled their disparities on the activity of government bus services in one another’s territory.
Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) Managing Director Sunil Sharma and Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) MD Krishna Babu signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Hyderabad within the presence of Telangana’s Transport Minister Puvvada Ajay Kumar.
Under the MoU, APSRTC buses will cover 1,60,999 km in Telangana while TSRTC buses will cover 1,61,258-km courses in Andhra Pradesh
Prior to the lockdown, TSRTC used to run buses on 1.5 lakh course km in Andhra Pradesh while APSRTC operated its buses on 2.5 lakh course km in Telangana.
Ajay Kumar said to reporters that despite the fact that there was some postponement, the two have arrived at an agreement. He stated that during the lockdown the two states understood that they have no proper agreement on bus operations.
The interstate bus services have been suspended since March 25 when the cross-country lockdown was enforced to check the spread of COVID-19.
In spite of the fact that the two corporations continued bus services inside their respective states following the unwinding of lockdown standards in May, the interstate services couldn’t be re-established because of the differences.
Telangana demanded parity in bus operations however a few rounds of talks between the officials of two state-owned transport bodies couldn’t settle the differences.
With the signing of MoU, TSRTC, which prior used to operate 750 services each day, will currently run 820 services and the number of APSRTC’s bus services in Telangana will decrease down to 638 each day from 1,009 prior to lockdown.
Since the time Telangana came into existence after the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the interstate passenger bus services were operated based on
the ad hoc arrangements under Clause 72(1) of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Act 2014.
Telangana felt that the plan was largely stacked in favour of APSRTC because of different factors, including travel by more passengers from Andhra to Telangana, particularly Hyderabad.
APSRTC operates a greater part of its bus services to Hyderabad from Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Guntur, Anantapur, Rajahmundry, Kurnool and some other destinations.
