Private buses demand high amounts for tickets now for Pongal
Posted on: 14/Jan/2019 9:32:27 AM
Pongal festival is fast approaching and many people go to their native places to celebrate Pongal festival is well known. Taking advantage of this situation, many private as well as omni buses are demanding high amounts for tickets from the commuters now. The information gathered was the private and omni buses are charging an additional amount ranging between Rs 800 to Rs 1800 per ticket in this 2019. It is well known that the state government had arranged as many as 11000 special buses from Chennai to many parts of Tamil Nadu to cope up with the extra rush for Pongal season.
Usually an amount ranging between Rs 600 to Rs 700 would be collected as ticket fare from Chennai to Madurai but now amount ranging between Rs 1100 to Rs 1500 is being collected. It is worth mentioning that the cost of non a/c sleeper tickets was Rs 1800 to Rs 2200 between Chennai to Madurai. The buses fares from the Chennai city to other places like Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Trichy, Thanjavur, Mayiladuthurai and Karur ranged between Rs 1500 to Rs 1800.
The point is those people travelling to southern districts are worst affected now by this hike in the ticket prices. In seater buses, the ticket prices to places such as Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari, Nagercoil, Thoothukudi, Thiruchendur etc peaked up to Rs 2000 to Rs 2500. From 9th of January onwards the fares have been increased. A commuter belonging to Nagercoil expressed his unhappiness about the increased ticket prices and said usually the ticket would cost Rs 900 to Nagercoil from Chennai but now it cost Rs 2200. It must be taken into account that the transport department did not intervene due to lack of legal provisions. The point to be noted is for permit violations, few tourist buses operating from Koyambedu were penalised. A transport department official opened out that amount of more than Rs 30 lakhs were collected from the private tourist buses for permit violations.
He also spoke about how the union government had to amend the Motor Vehicles Act authorising the state transport departments to take action against erring omni buses.
