An aerial view of the city bus stand that was blocked by agitating students, policemen guard the city bus depot at Master Canteen Square and passengers wait for buses at Master Canteen Square depot in Bhubaneswar. Pictures by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 2: When 34-year-old Susmita Biswal of Jatni reached Bhubaneswar by train, as always, she had planned to take a convenient bus ride to Patia to meet her younger sister. But today, a huge crowd outside the locked bus depot left her confused. Disappointed, she had to opt for shared autorickshaws, something she would need to change thrice to reach her destination.

“Things were fine even two days ago. I don’t understand why bus service were disrupted today. Now, with two bags as luggage, I will have to keep changing autorickshaws to reach Patia,” said Biswal.

For the second consecutive day today, city bus service were disrupted over agitation of students demanding free rides. Nearly 500 students of various colleges sat on a dharna in front of the city bus depot in Master Canteen. As a result, not even a single city bus could manage to go out of the depots. Nearly 84 city buses remained stranded at the bus depot.

Apart from going round the city, the buses also ply to faraway places such as Cuttack, Khurda and Puri. But, commuters were seen waiting for buses across the city, only to be disappointed. The unprecedented interruption also irked many commuters.

“I waited for more than half-an-hour, but could not see a single city bus. Later I came to know that bus service were cancelled for some protest. How can they stop bus services like this without prior information?” asked Sattwik Mohapatra, who had to go to Nandankanan.

Commuters, who could not afford the bus service, had to travel by autorickshaws paying hefty fares. “If one has to travel to Nandankanan by an autorickshaw, he has to pay the fare four times more than that of the city buses,” said Ashok Swain, a resident of Barang, who was waiting at the bus stop near Acharya Vihar.

Bijay Rath, senior operations manager of Dream Team Sahara, said the decision to stop the movement of city buses had to be taken due to the students’ agitation. “We were forced to stop the bus service today to prevent any untoward incident,” he added.

City mayor Anant Narayan Jena, who is also the chairman of Bhubaneswar Puri Transport Services Limited, criticised the students’ protest. “If they have any issues, they need to inform it in a written format. It is illegal to disrupt city buses, which is an essential service of the government,” he added.

The students, however, justified their move of disrupting bus service. “Our protest is in the greater interest of the students who are deprived of free bus rides. Students are provided with free bus service even in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. Though we staged a symbolic protest yesterday, the authorities did not pay any heed to our demands. We, therefore, decided to interrupt the bus service even today,” said Sandipan Das, a student of BJB Autonomous College.

The state government had invited a team of representatives of the protesting students for a meeting today. But no solution came out from the discussion. Earlier, the students had threatened to continue their strike and paralyse the bus service till their demands were fulfilled.