Talks between APSRTC, TSRTC fail to bear fruits

Hyderabad: Stalemate continued in the talks between the RTC officials of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as the APSRTC officials refused to decrease the kilometers in Telangana.

A meeting was held between the executive directors of APSRTC and TSRTC officials here at Bus Bhavan on Wednesday. According to official sources, the TSRTC officials wanted their AP counterparts to decrease the number of kilometers of their buses in Telangana. According to officials, the APSRTC buses travel 2.67 lakh kilometers in Telangana, whereas the TSRTC buses travel for about 1.64 lakh kilometers. The TSRTC officials have been demanding the APSRTC to operate buses on parity basis. They wanted the same number of buses and same number of kilometers.

Sources said that the APSRTC officials have refused the proposal of TSRTC to decrease the number of kilometers. However, the officials have said that they would be responding to this within two days.

The stalemate in the talks is causing inconvenience to the passengers as the inter-state buses in these two States have been stopped since the nationwide lockdown in the country. Though the TSRTC has started inter-state buses towards Maharashtra and Karnataka (except Bengaluru), the services are yet to start in Andhra Pradesh.

The RTC unions had also demanded the governments to sort out the issues and take steps for starting the inter-state services as soon as possible. They had alleged that delay in taking a decision was becoming profitable to the private operators.