Despite getting a full-fledged trial of electric buses from companies in Chandigarh as to how they work, two senior UT officers headed last week to China to ‘study the working of electric buses’.
Interestingly, the UT Administration twice floated tenders for 40 mini-electric buses but no bidders came forward. Now they will float the tender again.
The six-day trip by Transport Secretary Ajay Singla and Transport Director Uma Shankar Gupta was undertaken against this background. The duo spent three days in Shanghai and then three days in Shenzen with boarding, lodging and flight tickets all at the cost of public money.
Singla said, “I wasn’t there when the trial was held so I don’t know about it. But we studied how the buses work. Shangai has about 6,000 buses that have been running for the last 15-odd years and Shenzen has about 17,000 buses.”
He said, “We learnt a lot from these places and now even otherwise
our buses are coming so the study will help us in the working of
electric buses.”
Singla will be retiring in February.
It was in August 2017 that the trial of electric buses for 15 days was held in Chandigarh. The trial was jointly carried out by the Chandigarh Transport Undertaking (CTU) and the State Transport Department. During the trial, weight of about 1,750 kg was put in the buses and 11-member team that was constituted wrote about the pros and cons in its report. Then UT decided to purchase mini-buses.
City Congress chief Pardeep Chhabra said, “When the trial was already held in the city for half a month, I don’t understand what was the need to pay a visit to a foreign country to study the working again. It is completely a wastage of public money — the taxes which people pay from their hard- earned money.”
In 2016, the project of having electric buses was introduced in Chandigarh. Earlier, UT had planned to buy 20 big electric buses at a cost of Rs 32 crore. One bus was costing around Rs 1.25 crore to Rs 1.40 crore. Later, help from the Centre was sought but the funds were denied. It was then that the UT decided to get buses from its own budget. A trial was held for 15 days and various issues were discussed because the length of the proper electric buses was too big and because of various curves and turns in the city and roundabouts, it was showing difficulty in manoeuvering the vehicle.
Chandigarh has a fleet of 500 buses. Having electric buses was the need of the hour due to increasing pollution in the city where air quality index most of the time remains above 100 micrograms per cubic metre.
Trips undertaken in name of mobility plan and smart city. Various UT officers from different cadres have splurged lakhs from public money on foreign tours in the name of studying smart city issues or mobility.
Two IAS officers were in the dock for visiting three countries — Paris (France), Barcelona (Spain) and Germany — and using the capacity-building funds where they spent around Rs 60 lakh. Both the officers have moved out on transfers now. Audit objections had been raised on their trips.
One officer spent Rs 18 lakh on a three-day trip from September 1 to 3, 2015, and later overstayed till September 7. Another officer spent Rs 10 lakh on a three-day trip.
Then in 2016, both the IAS officers visited Germany from March 14 to 18 for a ‘Make in India’ event and spent around Rs 29 lakh. The officers overstayed eight days and even visited Rome in Italy and spent Rs 14 lakh from SPIC funds.
