A conductor swipes a smart card in a city bus in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 26: The state government is planning to reduce fare of private buses following diesel prices going down. The fare tariff for these buses was revised last August.

The decision came after the Private Bus Owners’ Association members said that they would welcome any step by the government for downward revision of the fares after price of diesel went down by Rs 3.63 per litre in Bhubaneswar since October 18.

Following the cut, the price of diesel came down to Rs 59.87 from Rs 63.50. The BJP and several other political parties had also sought reduction of bus fares. “When the diesel price was going up we were incurring huge losses. So we wanted a fare hike. Now that diesel price has gone down, we have no problem if the state government decides to revise the fare,” said private bus owners’ association spokesperson Debasish Nayak.

An emergency meeting of the state transport authority was held yesterday where the decision on reduction of fare was taken. However, the amount of reduction will be decided on Monday, said a transport official.

The technical committee of the transport department consisting of financial advisors of state government, officials of Odisha State Road Transport Corporation and state transport authority and secretary of All-Odisha Private Bus Owners’ Association will take a decision on the amount of reduction. The state government had effected a fare revision for private buses on August 19 following repeated threats by the private bus owners.

The transport department increased the fares by five to eight paisa per kilometre. The bus owners had argued that there had been an increase of Rs 7.26 per litre in the price of diesel since the previous fare revision in October 2013. As the central government decided to de-regularise diesel, the oil companies had the liberty of increasing or decreasing the prices after watching international market conditions. The bus owners have demanded that the state government must come up with an automatic fare revision formula.

Sources said that the technical committee of the government might discuss evolving an automatic fare revision formula like the one the government has formulated for city buses.

In another development, city bus operators have reduced the price of smart cards for cashless travel in these buses.

The price of these cards has been reduced to Rs 50 from Rs 60. Besides, smart card users, who were earlier supposed to recharge them immediately after buying, will now have the option of recharging later.

The operators took the step to reduce the card price as they failed to reach out to more people. Sources said that despite smart cards having been launched in June first week it could not reach more than 2,000 in five months.

“We have brought a little change and in the coming days we will adopt different ways to reach out to more people,” said Sudhanshu Jena, chief executive officer of Dream Team Shahara, the private operator of the bus service.