Cuttack, July 31: The absence of required details in the tender to invite private players has forced the municipal corporation to delay its city bus service project.

The Cuttack Municipal Corporation has created the Cuttack Urban Transport Service (CUTSL), a special purpose vehicle, to manage the city bus service with a fleet of 100 vehicles.

With the municipal commissioner as the chief executive officer, the transport service had invited tenders with a request for proposal "to engage entities and organisations for operation of city bus service". But, it had failed to attract any private party, because the route chart drawn up for the city bus service did not mention the number of buses on each route.

Sources said two private parties had responded. However, though they took part in the pre-bid session, they stayed away in the final-bid stage.

"We will shortly prepare a new route chart and submit it to the government. After getting the approval, fresh tenders would be invited," chief executive officer of the service Gyana Das told The Telegraph today.

Bhubaneswar-Puri Transport Service Limited, under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, manages the city bus service in Bhubaneswar, Puri and Cuttack.

The CUTSL plans to engage the operator for the city bus service covering the 320-sqkm Cuttack development plan area that includes 59 wards under the civic body, 19 wards under the Choudwar municipality and 60 villages. While three to four buses every hour has been planned on the intra-city routes, two buses every hour has been planned on inter-city routes.

Ten routes have been identified to cover both Cuttack and Choudwar. The routes were chosen to provide connectivity to important centres of the city such as the railway station, Matagajpur, Nuapada, Nirgundi, Charbatia, Choudwar and Badambadi.

"The new route chart is already being made. The number of buses on each route will be finalised on the basis of feasibility. We expect it to be ready for final approval within the next four days," head of the standing committee for licence and appeal Bikash Ranjan Behera told The Telegraph today.

"We expect to get the new route chart approved by the government and invite fresh tenders for operation of the bus service by August 15," Behera said.

"The contract would be on operation and maintenance basis where the selected private operator will have to incur all expenses connected with the operations, including taxes. In return, the operator would be allowed to collect and retain appropriate fares from the passengers as notified by us," Das said.

"The operator will be allowed to utilise the advertisement space on the buses and the bus stands. But, they will have to share the revenues with us," he said.

The corporation had planned to come up with 52 bus shelters across the city on build-operate-transfer basis through a five-year contract with private operators. A tender has already been invited for the purpose.

Sources said the tender papers had been opened and were being scrutinised.