Mumbai: "Aamchi Mumbai, Aamchi BEST," an organisation dedicated to defend the BEST Undertaking has slammed BEST officials for making "tall promises" but not doing anything about them.
Convenor of the organisation, Vidyadhar Date, said "Since 2019, BEST officials have made tall promises, of increasing the number of buseses But the actual number of buses continues to decline. In 2010 BEST had a 4,385 -strong public bus fleet. By July this year the total number of buses has dropped to 3158 out of which the only 1072 are owned by BEST. In the next few years, the BEST owned fleet will disappear altogether. Faced with financial problems of its own making, the BEST and BMC are now making plans to redevelop precious public land holdings to 'generate revenue' for the utility. Meanwhile, declining fleet, discontinuation of long routes, badly maintained small buses. diverted buses, and failing operations have made travel an unbearable torture for common Mumbaikars."
Date said "We demand to know: why one of the richest municipal corporations in India is refusing to merge their budget with the BEST budget in order to subsidize this city bus service? Why this discrimination against the BEST when almost a lakh crore is to be spent on the loss-making Metro rail by borrowing funds? Why are the safe, larger BEST buses being replaced by smaller, badly maintained wet-leased or contractor owned private buses which frequently break down or even burst into flames in some cases?"
He wanted to know "Why are there are no conductors in wet-leased buses? Who will benefit from the redevelopment of BEST lands? Why is the government rich when thinking about new expressways, bridges and Metros, but poor when thinking about essential public services for working people such as the BEST? Why is an affordable, safe and comfortable public transport system not a poll promise of any political party?"
"It is therefore necessary to reiterate what is obvious to anyone who has observed the predicament of BEST: that all the talk since 2019 of massive expansion via wet leasing is bogus, and merely a cover for curtailing or winding down BEST, to (a) prevent it from competing with the big-ticket Metro project, and (b) to open up BEST's land holdings in the city for commercial exploitation," Date alleged.
The organisation has organised a press conference on August 7 on the issue which will be addressed by Justice Hemant Gokhale (Retd), Raju Parulekar, and Prof Tapati Mukhopadhyay.
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