‘Planning to procure 342 low-floor buses to be operated in 65 routes’

CHENNAI: The State Transport department on Thursday informed the Madras High Court that it intended to procure 342 low-floor buses for the easy accessibility of disabled people and the same will be operated in 65 routes in the Greater Chennai City Corporation limits.

J Ravindran, Additional Advocate General made this submission in an affidavit before the first bench of Acting Chief Justice T Raja and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy. The bench was hearing a petition filed by cross-rights activist Vaishnavi Jayakumar for a direction to quash tenders floated for procuring buses for the reason that were not low-floored and inaccessible to disabled people.

During the last hearing, the judges asked the state to file a counter to appraise the court about the possible routes in which the low-floor buses can be brought into operation.

In the counter-affidavit, the state further submitted that 130 rural roads are falling under the Chennai City Corporation and since they are very narrow, low-floor buses could not be plied on those roads.

"The low floor buses cannot ply on the 74 roads where only mini buses can go and the buses with low ground clearance cannot be accommodated in 186 routes where metro works are under progress, " the government said in its affidavit.

It further informed the court that there are subways in 173 routes and operating low-floor buses on those routes during the monsoon season will cause damages.

Recording the submissions, the judges directed the government to take senior counsel PS Raman for the Institute of Road Technology, AAG Ravindran, petitioner Vaishnavi and her advocate Yogeswaran and others to travel in a low-floor bus to find out the difficulties in operating them in the difficult routes.

The court asked the government to file a report after making the travel with the above-said team. The case was posted on February 20.