Cuttack: The municipal corporation is coming up with 52 bus shelters that will have sitting arrangements, provision for kiosks and display screens for messages.

The corporation has inked a five-year contract with a private contractor to build the shelters. Municipal commissioner Bikash Ranjan Mohapatra said: "The project idea is to provide bus shelters to commuters as part of reforms aimed at service delivery that is qualitative, reliable and sustainable."

"The bus shelters have not been planned just for city bus commuters. Those coming up at Badambadi and Link Road would also serve others too," Mohapatra said.

After inviting tenders, the Cuttack Municipal Corporation had assigned the job of design, finance, erection and maintenance of the shelters to a private party on the basis of the location plan provided by its survey section.

"The job has been assigned to Bhubaneswar-based Torrent Advertisers, and the construction of 22 bus shelters has already been completed. We expect construction of the remaining 30 bus shelters to be over by December end this year," chairman of the civic body's standing committee for licence and appeal Bikash Ranjan Behera said.

The private operator will be responsible for smooth maintenance of the shelters and bear the overall cost for those and foot the monthly electric bills as well. "The private party will build, operate and maintain the bus shelters for five years and then transfer it to the civic body," Behera said. "During these five years, the operator will have the sole and exclusive advertisement rights on the shelters but will pay the advertisement tax or licence fees on the kiosks and glow signs exhibited on the shelters annually to the civic body," Behera said.

Chandni Chhak resident Durga Madhav Mishra said: "Bus shelters are one of the unattended much needed civic needs in the city."

In another development, the state government had set up a special purpose vehicle - Cuttack Urban Transport Service Limited - under the aegis of corporation to drive the city bus project and provided a fleet of 30 buses for it.