Free bus travel for women in Karnataka proving unaffordable to the State Government

Proposal to increase the bus fare by 20%

Bengaluru (Karnataka) – The Congress party had promised to provide free bus service to women in Karnataka, if it won the State assembly elections. The Congress party won the elections and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah immediately made travel in State Government buses free for women. Reportedly, due to the financial burden of this scheme, the State Road Transport Corporation is planning to increase the bus fare.

The Congress government in Karnataka can no longer afford the free bus travel scheme for women!

Proposal to increase KSRTC bus fares by 20%!

This is a slap in the face of the Congress and similar parties that promise to give everything for free using the public’s money to gain… pic.twitter.com/aERBUrFjsq

— Sanatan Prabhat (@SanatanPrabhat) July 15, 2024

Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) Chairman S R Srinivas said, “We have taken the decision to increase the bus fare in the meeting. We have approved the proposal in this regard and will send it to the Chief Minister. We will propose a 15% to 20% fare hike to the State Government. Earlier, the fare was increased in the year 2019. At that time, the price of diesel was Rs 60 per litre per day, it has now reached Rs 99. Apart from this, the prices of the spare parts of the buses have also increased. Employees are constantly demanding salary hike. The agreement with the employees states that ‘salary should be increased every 4 years’. The previous Government did not follow the same due to COVID-19 crisis. We are facing a challenging situation. We are under pressure due to all these things. If we increase the fare, we can easily get rid of all these issues.”

Loss of Rs 295 crore in 3 months

Srinivas added, “If we consider the last 3 months, we have suffered a loss of Rs 295 crore. We have approximately 8,000 buses and all of them have run 10 to 11 lakh km so far. There are around 450 to 500 Volvo buses, which have also run 2 million km. So, we have to purchase new Volvo buses as well. We also discussed the same during the meeting. Considering the cost of buying new buses and maintaining the old ones, the fare hike is inevitable.”

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