118 private buses inaugurated

West Bengal Transport Minister Madan Mitra today inaugurated 118 private buses to be operated in various routes from North 24 Parganas district.
These buses would ply to the new state secretariat 'Nabanna', Muslim holy place Furfurasharif, Hindu pilgrim town Chakla and other places.
At the inaugural programme held here in from North 24 Parganas district, Mitra said 350 offer letters were issued for more buses, and efforts were on to reintroduce buses in 25 routes where services were stopped for various reasons.
The transport minister said the state government would would arrange for bank loans within three days if someone seeks a bus permit.

Commercial vehicle-maker Ashok Leyland on July 30 had handed over to the West Bengal government 30 buses that were the world's first front-engined fully flat low-floor single-step-entry buses.
On the rampant taxi refusal cases, Mitra reiterated that the menace would come to an end by December 31 as a massive drive was on to check the practice.

He had said in the Assembly early last month that the menace of taxi refusal was rampant and growing but the government was confident that this problem would be fixed within December 31 this year.
Mitra said the government had taken strong measures and around 600 papers from taxis were seized in recent times.

Meanwhile, the state government did not have any plan to regularise e-rickshaws, popularly known as Totos, the minister said.
Categorised between a pedal rickshaw and an auto-rickshaw, battery-operated e-rickshaws can run upto a speed of 25 km per hour and can accommodate around 4-5 passengers.