Mysuru district prepares alternative transport plans for strike day

Mysuru: Deputy commissioner G Lakshmikanth Reddy on Monday directed officials to make alternative arrangements across the district to tackle the disruption for commuters following the indefinite strike by KSRTC staff from Wednesday.

Chairing the meeting with private bus and minicab operators, along with transport and police department officials, he issued directions to the officials to be ready with Plan B about the possibility of deploying private buses, maxi cabs and other transport operators in case the bus strike affects people severely in urban and semi-urban areas across the district as they successfully handled disruptions during the previous KSRTC employees strike.

KSRTC rural division operates its 720 fleet of buses in 690 schedules, while the city division operates 534 buses in 517 schedules in the district. Officials must be ready with an alternative roadmap if all these state-run buses across the district remain off the road following the strike.

The DC asked the officials to prepare a list of private buses, maxi cabs, mini buses and other private transport operators available in the district to make use of them in emergency situations.

As chances of private bus operators and maxi cab owners misusing the situation, hiking fares and fleecing the people are likely, officials belonging to regional transport authority, KSRTC and police must work together to curb such activities of private vehicles during the strike call, he said.

The DC also gave directions to police to deploy additional police at all KSRTC bus stands, taluk and city headquarters to curb stone-pelting, damage to state-run buses and other untoward incidents during the strike, and initiate tough measures.

Superintendent of police Mallikarjuna Baladandi, DCP Sundaraj, KSRTC Mysuru Urban divisional controller HT Veeresh, and Mysuru rural divisional controller Sreenivas were present at the meeting.