Kolkata, Sep 17 (PTI) West Bengal transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty on Saturday said his department will issue a notice before Durga Puja asking private bus and mini buses to refrain from increasing fares arbitrarily.

Bus operators, however, maintained that any unilateral decision without consultation with stakeholders would not be accepted.

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They also said that a fare revision was necessary in the post-COVID scenario.

Chakraborty, talking to reporters on the sidelines of a programme, said the transport department would soon issue a notice cautioning against arbitrary bus fare hike, and hold a meeting with operators to arrive at a solution that would be beneficial for them as well as common people.

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"We need to ensure that the general public do not face the heat of any steep fare hike. There has to be a regulatory mechanism," he said.

The general secretary of West Bengal Bus and Mini Bus Owners' Association, Pradip Narayan Basu, told PTI that the last fare revision was done on July 8, 2018 and running services with the current fare chart was nothing short of impossible in the post-COVID situation.

The industry had been reeling under losses incurred due to COVID-induced lockdown and subsequent hike in petrol and diesel prices, Basu said.

"Our conductors are requesting for allowances of Rs 1-4 from passengers depending on the distance covered by them. This is be the minimum possible amount that we seek to recover the running cost of a vehicle. We had been regularly urging the government to arrive at a solution so that the industry can sustain, the employees can survive, and the commuters are not overburdened.

"If there is any move on the part of the government to force us to accept the 2018 fare chart without discussions, private buses in the entire state will come to a halt," Basu stated.

He noted that 44,000 carriages (private buses and minibuses) were plying the state before the pandemic struck, "but the number has now come down to 27,000".

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)