KSRTC withdrawal a great woe for Udupi commuters, people suffer

Mangalore Today News Network

Udupi, July 13, 2017: Addressing media in Udupi, Congress leader P. Amrit Shenoy said here on July 12, Wednesday that people in many areas of the district were suffering owing to discontinuation of low-floor Karnataka State Road Transport (KSRTC) buses after the private bus operators got an order from the High Court of Karnataka quashing the 55 route permits of these buses.

Amrit. Shenoy said that the private bus operators should have held talks with Minister of State for Fisheries, Youth Empowerment and Sports Pramod Madhwaraj or officials of the district administration if they had any complaints. But, by approaching and getting an order from the High Court, they are responsible for the hardship being caused to the people in the district owing to the stoppage of the low-floor government buses without warning.

 Shenoy said Minister  Madhwaraj or the government were not against private bus operators. The private sector too has to survive. The intention behind starting the low-floor government bus services was to provide better service to the people. It was started despite the pressure of not to start it, he added. The Congress was blaming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for supporting the private buses because the president of the City Bus Operators’ Association, Kuilady Suresh Nayak, was a BJP leader. “But all efforts would be made to resolve the problem by holding talks with private operators,” he said. On the BJP blaming the government for prolonged period of unrest in Dakshina Kannada district, he said that there were no major scandals in the last four years of the Siddaramaiah-led government. The BJP wanted an issue to portray that the law and order had collapsed. But a few incidents of violence cannot be termed as collapse of law and order, he said. Both the Minister for Forests and Environment B. Ramanath Rai and Minister for Food and Civil Supplies U.T. Khader were not supporting any fundamentalist forces. But Shobha Karandlaje, MP, was giving provocative statements.

On the lack of stern measures to control the unrest, he said that if such measures were taken, then the BJP would go around saying that it was an attack on the Hindu community. Hence, the government was handling the situation taking all factors into account. Sunitha Shetty, Nityananda Kemmannu, Prabhakar Nayak, Joel Soans, and Vijay D’Souza, Sanjay, and Congress leaders, were present.