Karnataka - Bangalore   

500 more mini buses under `Gramina Saarige'

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, FEB. 22. The Chairman of Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation, R.V. Devaraj, on Sunday said that 500 more mini buses would be operated to connect villages to taluk headquarters.

Laying the foundation stone for construction of a bus station and two depots and a hostel for women employees of the corporations at Krishnarajapuram here, Mr. Devaraj said 500 buses were being run under the "Gramina Saarige" network. Almost 98 per cent of the villages had been covered, he added.

He said 14 acres of land of the Indian Telephone Industries, a public sector undertaking, on Old Madras Road had been acquired at a cost of Rs. 3.85 crores.

Mr. Devaraj, who distributed 125 sites to the employees of the corporations, said the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation would set up a hi-tech workshop at Krishnarajapuram, if it got 20 acres of land for it.

Stating that there would be no increase in bus fare even though the road transport corporations in the State had borne an additional burden of Rs. 20 crores following a cumulative increase of Rs. 3.50 per litre of diesel since November 2003, he said the corporations were making a profit of Re. 1 for every kilometre of operation. They were expected to earn a profit of Rs. 150 crores next year, he said.

A. Krishnappa, Minister for Social Welfare, thanked the ITI Chairman and Managing Director, Y.K. Pandey, for the company's gesture to hand over land for development projects in the area.

The former Minister for Railways, C.K. Jaffer Sharief, criticised the President of the State BJP, H.N. Ananth Kumar, for attempting to take undue credit for the cable-stayed bridge. The party did not have the courtesy of giving credit to the initiators of the project. But the people knew the truth and they could not be misguided.

The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation said in a pamphlet circulated at the function that a makeshift bus station would come up on the acquired land within 10 days. The proposed hostel for women employees of the corporations would come up at a cost of Rs. 75 lakhs. It would provide accommodation to 900 women.

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