Hyderabad: Online booking of tickets for various private travel operators will soon be monitored.
Road Transport Authority officials are now cracking down on websites offering tickets on contract carriage buses as, in effect, they become stage carriages.
Officials say that such websites will also be liable for action. RTA officials raided about 42 private operators on Monday and Tuesday.
A thin line separates stage carriages and contract carriages. While contract carriage permits don’t allow buses to pick up passengers from different points during a journey, stage carriages allow passengers to board and disembark at different stages.
However, hundreds of buses flout rules and ply as stage carriages although they only have contract carriage licences.
After the bus mishap in Mahbubnagar two months ago, RTA officials have been cracking down on many of these firms.
However, transport officials say that websites booking tickets are also on their radar since they offer tickets in violation of the rules.
“If a bus with a contract carriage permit offers tickets for booking on a website, then the website is also accountable. Most websites belong to private operators but third party websites also exist, which are fewer in number but used most often,” an RTA official said. Transport minister Botsa Satyanarayana had also stressed on the need to regulate websites offering tickets.
Data on the servers of several private operators is crucial evidence to prove that a bus has been run as a stage carriage when it only possessed a contract carriage permit,” the official said.
