After the bus owners refused to take the buses sanctioned under the JNNURM scheme, the state government on Thursday agreed to give them subsidy, a demand that the owners had been raising for long time.

While for buses the subsidy will be to the tune of Rs 50,000, for minibuses it will be Rs 30,000. This comes as a relief after 2,557 buses had to be withdrawn from Kolkata roads due to the ban on old polluting buses by Calcutta High Court.

Of the 1,300 new buses sanctioned under JNNURM, 50 buses will be brought to the roads before the Durga Puja and on Friday five such buses will start plying on city roads.

“We demanded the finance department to sanction the money and they have agreed,” said Ranjit Kundu, state Minister for Transport.

Out of the 1,300 buses, 630 semi-low floor buses have been earmarked for the bus owners who will have to deposit Rs 2 lakh as security and will have to pay Rs 22,000 coupled with service tax and other taxes every month to the government for a period of eight years.

“We hope this will make the bus owners to take up the scheme readily,” said Asim Dasgupta, state Minister for Finance who held a meeting with Kundu.

Bus owners welcomed the move but expressed reservations on its implementation. “The government had made similar announcements earlier but those promises were not fulfilled. But if they do it then we welcome it,” said Swarnakamal Saha, Secretary, Bengal Bus Syndicate.

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