Paint is in the news again. The decision to paint all city buses saffron seems as inexplicable as the high turnover of transport ministers in the state. The cabinet has seen four transport ministers in as many years. Pramod Navalkar, Chandrakant Khaire, Divakar Raote and now Gajanan Kirtikar. The decision to saffronise the buses taken by Raote during his eight-month tenure, has stirred a hornet's nest. However, speaking to Sandeep Unnithan, a belligerent Raote countered all charges that this was yet another poll-eve election stunt by a beleaguered Sena-BJP government that seems fast running out of ideas.

How did you get this idea of painting buses saffron?
Firstly let me clarify, it's not exactly saffron, it's called `downing glow' (as in sunset) and is only a lighter shade of the postal red that we use on buses. In November last year,the Thane Municipal Corporation purchased 40 buses and they wanted to use this colour on them. They approached me when I was transport minister and I agreed. And since the colour of buses in just one corporation or city could not be changed, we decided to implement it for all 27 cities in the state. A draft notification was issued on February 12 and a one-month period was given to hear public objections. The process is still on and we expect the notification to come into force shortly.

Call it downing glow or saffron, people say this is yet another pre-poll gimmick by the Sena-BJP government to foist their party colour on the people.
You are instigating the people. Why do you say that the colour is the party? Did anyone say that the red buses represented the Communist Party? The colour is never the party, the flag is. And anyway, saffron is part of our national flag, the colour of the nation. I pity those who're allergic to this colour.

The Youth Congress has threatened to take to the streetsand paint your saffron buses black in protest.
Were they sleeping when we had issued the notification? Such decisions are not taken overnight. Within the government, there is a system of issuing notifications and listening to objections. Nothing happens overnight. We took four years to learn this, and if they (the Congress) haven't learnt this after 40 years of ruling the state, they deserve to be on the street. The buses have been plying in Thane for a few months now and no Congressman has taken objection to them so far.

But won't it be a waste of public funds, which could be better spent elsewhere?
The government has not asked for all the buses to be painted at the same time. The buses will be painted in phases when they come for their annual RTO inspection. It will take over a year to complete this process and there won't be any additional cost.

Red buses are a landmark in the city just as yellow and black taxi cabs are. Wouldn't you be changing all this?
People are notreally bothered about the colour of the bus, whether it is yellow, blue or white. Nobody has objected to the buses in Thane, or refused to board them. They're bothered about ticket prices not the colour. All this controversy is the work of mischievous presspersons.

So you're saying this isn't a political decision.
No it isn't. It was purely administrative, taken after the Thane administration approached us. Had it been a political decision, there would have been an announcement. This issue came up last week when the Thane corporation was reading out a list of my achievements at a function.