BEST revokes decision to cancel 52 routes

Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) has revoked its decision to cancel 52 bus routes and restored services on 33 routes today.
The decision was taken after over 70 Shiv Sena corporators, mostly women, yesterday met BEST general manager Jagdish Patil and demanded withdrawal of the decision.
The corporators purportedly pressurised the general manager to revoke the decision.
"Our administration has successfully restored 33 routes out of 52 scrapped by today afternoon. We are in the process of restoring remaining 19 routes in next four days," BEST spokesperson Manoj Varade, told PTI.
Varade, however, denied that the decision was taken under any sort of pressure.

"The decision of restoring all the 52 routes has been taken following the demand (and) not under any kind of pressure. Our administration will closely the monitor the impact of restoring the routes and forward decision would be taken accordingly in the future," he said.

BEST had cancelled the 52 routes from May 1 (Sunday) citing that the routes were "extremely loss-making".
Opposition Congress, however, termed the decision of BEST as "non-statutory".
"The decision was taken by the House (of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation). Hence, the decision to revoke should have also been taken in the House only. This is a case of challeging the supremacy of the House," BEST committee member (of Congress) Shivaji Singh said.

According to traffic assessment conducted by BEST, by the end of October, 2014, it had 0 'A' class (profit making routes), 39 'B' class (no profit-no loss routes) and 472 'C' class (loss-making routes).