Patna, Aug. 15: The 216 swanky bus queue shelters across 108 locations in the city have turned out to be a big waste of public money.

The steel structure bus shelters, built at a cost of around Rs 13.62cr in 2014-15, have fallen prey to poor maintenance by the authorities as well as red tape.

Forget normal city service buses, even Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) buses don't stop at these the queue shelters. Consequently, vendors and slum-dwellers have encroached many of them.

Sources claimed that there was no mechanism yet for these bus shelters. Bihar Urban Infrastructure Development Corporation (BUIDCo), the agency which developed the bus queue shelters, is solely responsible for their maintenance though Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) has been demanding to get their ownership for quite some time.

A senior BUIDCo official said bidding to operate and maintain the bus shelters had recently started. "A few companies have submitted bids to look after the maintenance of these shelters. They are likely to be handed over to PMC after selection of firm for maintenance," he said.

BUIDCo and PMC have been at loggerheads over issuing advertisement rights for these structures. Sources claimed BUIDCo had proposed to the civic body to grant them the respective advertisement rights in lieu of sharing the respective revenue.

However, acknowledging the fact that the revenue rates fixed for the electronic advertisement panels in the bus shelters are comparatively higher than getting a share from the respective revenue, the civic body asked BUIDCo to hand over the advertisement rights to them in lieu of payment of total establishment cost of the bus shelters.

"BUIDCo is the nodal agency for development of the bus shelters but it looks after the project on behalf of PMC. So the funds under this project were released to us and not directly to BUIDCo. Thus, PMC is the rightful claimant to these shelters," said a senior PMC official.

The first such shelter came up at the entrance of Mount Carmel High School in July, 2014. Each shelter can seat around 15 people. The length, width and height of its ramp are 16mX2.5mX8ft.

The shelters are proposed to be equipped with two closed-circuit television cameras, global position system (GPS) and public announcement system. However, neither the CCTV camera nor the GPS has been installed at any shelter owing to lack of security measures.

The shelters were developed as a part of a city-operational plan mandated by the ministry of urban development. According to the plan for Patna, 216 modern bus queue shelters and 97 electronic traffic signals were proposed to be installed for operation of 260 buses.