Vijayawada: Elections are going to be-come the major income source for the transport sector in the next few days as a huge number of Andhra Pradesh voters who stay in Hyderabad, Bellary and other distant places are coming home to cast their votes.
In direct proportion to the increase in demand, the transport sector has increased its service and also hiked up their charges from 50 to 200 per cent. Both the government sector as well as the private transporter operators have increased their services to AP from Hyderabad.
The APSRTC enhanced their services from Ben-galuru and Chennai as well. These extra services will be majorly on Ap-ril 9 and 10, just two days before the election commencing date, April 11.
As of now, the APSRTC is operating 525 services to Hyderabad and now they have increased it to 775 by adding 250 additional services from Hyd-erabad to different destinations in the state. The APSRTC operates 253 regular services from Bengaluru and 85 services from Chennai across the state. But on April 10, a total number of 103 ex-tra services from Ben-galuru and 25 extra services from Chennai would operate.
The TSRTC has also in-creased their services to AP as there are lakhs of people from AP, settled in Hyderabad. Hence they are also planning to operate extra special services to encash the demand created due to the election. Private bus operators have also plan-ned to operate 1,000 extra schedules apart from th-eir regular services from Hyderabad and other main cities.
With all the extra and regular services from both the Telugu state RTCs, nearly 3,500 buses will be available for the passengers from Hydera-bad and they have also planned to increase so-me more services if they are unable to control the rush.
Adding to this, is the four-wheeler population, with an expected incr-ease of nearly 1,500 to 2,000 vehicles heading towards AP during the election days.
Speaking to this newspaper, APSRTC chief tra-ffic manager Sk. Adam Saheb said, “We are goi-ng to operate the extra services to clear the rush towards the AP state for the election purpose on April 11 and we have planned to operate 478 express and deluxe services as extra schedules on April 9 and 10, all hea-ding towards Ongole, Guntur, Vijayawada, Eluru and Rajahmundry from Hyderabad.”
He further informed that they would collect 50 per cent extra fare on the general charges based on the model of the service.
Meanwhile, the political parties have already traced the voters who are staying at Hyderabad and other places. Hence all parties have planned to organise transport for their party supporters to transport them to their native villages and tow-ns in AP. They have allocated in-charges based on areas and community. But it has become probl-ematic to transport them as they are demanding more money to come to cast their vote and this is apart from their vote rate.
Adding to this, the APSRTC will have to arr-ange 7,300 buses and DGT vans to transport election duty officers and the election material across the state for the polling which will be conducted on April 11 on the orders of Chief Electoral Officer G.K. Dwivedi.
He has also instructed transportation commissioner to arrange 300 private buses for the election.
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