The state urban development department has yet again managed to shirk the responsibility of taking over the city bus service from Jharkhand Tourism Development Corporation (JTDC) in Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Dhanbad for the time being.

An overworked JTDC will continue to maintain and manage the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) fleet in the three cities till March 31 with the urban development department seeking three months more to complete the process of floating a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to ply the buses.

While the service is operational in the state capital, it is lying grounded in Jamshedpur since October and in Dhanbad since September.

'A meeting took place at the chief secretary level yesterday (Wednesday), where it was directed that as a stop-gap arrangement, we should continue managing and maintaining the city buses till March 31. We have received a communiqué in this regard from the state urban development department,' JTDC managing director Sunil Kumar told The Telegraph.

He further said that the urban development department had agreed to pay Rs 66 lakh to them against insurance of buses, day-to-day repairs and maintenance.

Although the buses were supposed to be run by the respective civic bodies under the urban development department, they were handed over to JTDC during the launch in 2010. JTDC, which had been operating the fleet by employing external agencies as service providers, has been trying to hand over the vehicles to the civic bodies - Ranchi Municipal Corporation, Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee and Dhanbad Municipal Corporation - for the past two years.

Hope came its way when former chief secretary Sudhir Prasad in September set December 31, 2014, as the last deadline for the handover. Prasad categorically stated that the urban development department must run the buses by forming an SPV after inviting request for proposal from interested private agencies.

But the urban development department kept dragging its feet on the matter and the model code of conduct for Assembly polls came into effect from October, further delaying the formalities.