A city bus in Ranchi on Monday. Picture by Hardeep Singh

Ranchi, May 9: A reluctant Jharkhand Tourism Development Corporation (JTDC) has been the saddled with the responsibility of running the city bus service in Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Dhanbad for another year.

The state government decided to bestow the responsibility on JTDC despite officials not being keen to continue with the task. JTDC had written at least three to four times to the state urban development department to hand over the task of running the service to respective civic bodies like Ranchi Municipal Corporation, Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee and Dhanbad Municipal Corporation at the earliest, but to no avail.

The tourism corporation, which handed over the fleet of 188 buses in the three cities to different service providers, was of the view that the civic bodies were better equipped to run the service after its successful launch last year.

“The decision to make us responsible for running the service was taken during President’s Rule with a clause that respective civic bodies would take over the task within a couple of months of the launch. Although no specific time frame was decided, JTDC has been requesting the urban development department to transfer the maintenance and management of services to the civic bodies since December. But now we have a letter from the urban development department stating that we have to carry on with the task,” a senior JTDC official said.

The city bus service was flagged off in the three cities amid much fanfare under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). However, recurring losses and the fact that the tourism corporation could not run the buses successfully meant the service providers were always on the receiving end as far as financial problems were concerned.

JTDC manager (administration) Alok Prasad a letter dated May 5 from additional secretary in the urban development department Sunil Kumar said city buses would continue to be run under JTDC supervision in 2011-12 as the respective civic bodies could not take over the responsibility due to shortage of manpower.

In Ranchi, a fleet of total 70 buses are being run by A.S.K. Securities while in Dhanbad, the same number of buses are being operated by Rider Security. In Jamshedpur, Capital Securities manages the 48 buses.

However, out of a fleet of 188 buses, only 150 are on the roads on a daily basis.

Commenting on the financial issues, JTDC official N.K. Singh said a whopping Rs 50.32 lakh was still to be recovered from the National Games Organising Committee (NGOC). The arrears pertain to the 34th National Games in February this year when the services of city buses were provided to ferry players and officials.

Meanwhile in Ranchi, JTDC today launched a “ring” service by pushing into service 20 more buses to ply to and from Project Building via Birsa Chowk, Hinoo, Doranda, Sujata Chowk, Siramtoli Chowk, Bahubazar Chowk, Kantatoli Chowk, Kokar Chowk, Khel Gaon, Booty More, Bariatu, Karamtoli Chowk, Randhir Verma Chowk, Raj Bhavan, Zakir Hussain Park, Nagababa Khatal, Ratu Road Chowk, Kishoreganj Chowk, Sahajanand Chowk, Argora Chowk and DPS School.

Fares would vary between Rs 3 and Rs 15 depending upon the distance.