‘Transport agencies in 12 states don’t run buses for specially-abled’: Centre

NEW DELHI: At least 12 state transport agencies don’t have a single bus for specially-abled persons and nearly 65 per cent of public transport buses being operated by the state authorities don’t cater to the needs of passengers with physical disabilities.

According to the Union Road Transport and Highways Ministry, 61 state transport undertakings (STUs), which are members of the Association of State Road Transport Undertakings (ASRTU), are operating 1,45,747 buses and only 51,043 of them are equipped with boarding and deboarding facility for persons with disabilities (PwDs).

State agencies, which don’t have buses equipped with facilities for persons with disabilities (PwD), are Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation, Odisha State Road Transport Corporation, Haryana State Transport, Arunachal Pradesh State Transport Department, Jammu and Kashmir State Road Transport Corporation, Meghalaya Transport Corporation, Mizoram State Transport, State Transport Punjab, Punjab State Bus Stand Management Company, Sikkim Nationalised Transport, Uttarakhand Transport Corporation and South Bengal State Transport Corporation.

While responding to questions in Rajya Sabha last week, Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said the entire fleet of Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), Jaipur City TSL, Tamil Nadu Kumbakonam, Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport (NMMT), Lucknow City Services Ltd, Meerut City Transport Services Ltd, Allahabad City Transport Services Ltd, Varanasi City Transport Services Ltd, Agra-Mathura Transport Services Ltd, Kanpur City Transport Services Ltd and Kerala Urban Road Transport Corporation have boarding and deboarding facilities for people in special need.

Congress MP Amee Yajnik sought to know whether most of the buses have any facility for boarding and deboarding of passengers with special needs, even after the amendment in the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989.Gadkari told the House that the ministry had taken several initiatives to achieve the targets fixed in the Accessible India Campaign (AIC), including directions for alteration in motor vehicles to facilitate the mobility of PwDs.He said that state governments and Union territory administrations had been directed to make at least 25 per cent of government-owned public transport vehicles fully accessible by March 2019.

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