Hyderabad misses the bus as RTC resumes services across Telangana

Hyderabad: The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation would be operating buses in the State except for the Hyderabad city from Tuesday morning.

This decision was taken after Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao gave green signal to the Corporation to run the buses. The Corporation would be operating buses in the State except for the city services.

There will be no long-distance buses as the inter-state services were not permitted as per the announcement of the Chief Minister.

"No buses from other States will be allowed inside the State nor any of the buses will be allowed to go out from the State," said the Chief Minister during a press conference.

The Chief Minister said that buses will come to Hyderabad from the districts but will not be allowed to the Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station at Imlibun and places like Dilsukhnagar and LB Nagar and will be diverted to the Jubilee Bus Station at Secunderabad as there was less intensity of corona cases.

Replying to a question, KCR said that the buses would be returning before 7 pm except for few special cases where the passengers will be given permission to reach their destination.

The Chief Minister said that all the contract carriages (private operators) were also allowed to run their buses and taxis.

The RTC officials said that physical distancing will be followed in the buses and the buses would be running with 50 per cent passengers.

The buses will be sanitised every day at starting points and ending points and only passengers wearing masks will be allowed to board the buses. There will be no additional charges to the existing fares, the officials said.

There Corporation has over 7,000 buses in the State, which would be operated from Tuesday. The city zone has about 3,500 buses, which would not be operated, said a senior official.

For the benefit of people in Hyderabad, permission was given to the autos and taxis for their transportation needs. The taxis would be allowed to operate with driver plus three passengers and autos with driver plus two passengers only.

The drivers and passengers should be strictly following physical distancing norms and vehicles should be sanitized every day. The passengers and drivers should compulsorily wear mask following the Covid-19 rules.