• Seema Kumari, an aspiring nurse and a resident of Baridih, Jamshedpur, had to hire a cab for a premium to ensure she was not late for an interview at a private hospital in Ranchi
• Balwinder Singh of Bhalubasa in the steel city hitched a ride in a van because he had to receive his daughter, arriving from Bangalore in an evening flight, at Birsa Munda Airport
• Ravi Banerjee of Ranchi was scheduled to go to Calcutta via Jamshedpur, but couldn't reach Tatanagar station on time to catch Jan Shatabdi Express
Ranchi/Jamshedpur: Several thousand passengers like them were largely inconvenienced on Friday as private long-distance buses went on a daylong strike in the steel city in protest against the demolition of makeshift ticket kiosks at Sitaramdera terminus.
The strike was called off in the evening after Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee (JNAC) managed to broker truce. Bus services between the capital and the steel city are expected to resume from Saturday morning.
Nearly 30,000 passengers take 400-odd buses from Sitaramdera every day to various destinations in Jharkhand, Bihar, Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha. A bulk of them travels between Ranchi and Jamshedpur.
Seema said she waited for a bus to Ranchi and then frantically searched for a cab for an hour. "Finally, I got one from Mango bridge at 7.30am."
Singh too waited for an hour before he took a van ride to the state capital. "My daughter's flight was on time. I couldn't have been late," he said.
"I am going to Kerala with my family members on Sunday. They stay in Calcutta while I work in Ranchi. Since buses were off roads, I tried a train to Jamshedpur, but couldn't get tickets. I plan to fly to Calcutta on Saturday," said Banerjee.
Patron of Jamshedpur Bus Owners' Welfare Association Upender Sharma said they had no alternative to a strike.
"The authorities have been hounding us like never before on the pretext of cleaning the city. There are no counters for tickets and operators had set up makeshift kiosks. But, these were demolished on flimsy grounds. We had approached the deputy commissioner and other senior officials, but in vain," Sharma said.
Special officer of JNAC Sanjay Pandey said bus operators had agreed to resume services from Saturday after the civic body said it would look into the demand for ticket counters.
"We plan to organise 40 counters. Drinking water facilities and seating arrangements for bus operators will also be made available at the earliest. However, operators have been told that the JNAC would not tolerate littering or unauthorised parking outside the terminus," Pandey added.
