The panchayat polls have forced schools and parents in Calcutta to change their schedule as over 300 school buses have been requisitioned and pressed into election duty in the districts.

Over 12,000 children have been affected in the process with many schools declaring forced holidays for some sections because not all students could be ferried in the curtailed number of buses. Some schools have given a break to their primary sections, while others were putting buses on double shifts.

Delhi Public School (Ruby Park, New Town and Megacity) and The Heritage School were left with fewer buses than usual from Monday to Wednesday. The buses of Apeejay School, Park Street, have been requisitioned for poll duty on Thursday and Friday.

“We are rotating classes for each section (junior, middle and senior) so that no student misses more than one school day. We will hold classes on a Saturday to make up for the loss,” an official of The Heritage School said.

The school requires 60 to 65 buses on a regular day.

The Heritage School and Delhi Public School, New Town, were 25 buses down while Apeejay has two less from its fleet of 17.

Apeejay has told parents to arrange for their own transport on Thursday and Friday.

DPS-Megacity was running double trips, but the school along with its New Town franchise has declared a poll holiday on July 19.

St. Lawrence High School, Patha Bhavan, St. Thomas’ Boys’ School, Kidderpore, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Ballygunge, and Bidya Bharati Girls’ High School were feeling the poll pinch too.

The absence of buses has forced parents into proxy poll duty. “Tollygunge to Park Street is quite a distance and I don’t trust the city roads to let my son (Class X) and daughter (Class V) go on their own to school. This means, I stay away from home during the crucial morning hours. This upsets my 79-year-old father-in-law’s routine too,” said S. Sultania.

DPS-Ruby Park had declared a holiday for nursery to Class IV students while DPS-New Town did the same for nursery to Class V.

“It’s difficult to accommodate all the students when about 25 buses were taken away. And it’s not possible for parents to bring their children to school and take them home after classes,” said an official of DPS -New Town.

The unaccounted-for holiday has forced many working parents in nuclear families to bunk office and stay put at home to take care of their children.

“I dropped my son at a relative’s house on my way to work these past three days,” said the mother of a four-year-old DPS-Ruby Park, student. “I don’t have that option, so I put him at day care,” another mother added.

According to Himadri Ganguly, the general secretary of the West Bengal Contract Carriage Owners and Operators Association, the requisitioning has been on since July 12 while some buses would be pressed into poll duty from Thursday. “We have about 2,500 buses in the city and the outskirts. Regular operations suffer when so many buses are requisitioned,” he said.

About 3,500 buses have been requisitioned from Calcutta alone, severely affecting public transport.

“About 60 per cent of the buses in the city are off the roads. This includes almost all JNNURM buses and many private ones,” said Tapan Bandopadhyay, the secretary of the Joint Council of Bus Syndicate.

“There used to be a bus every 10 minutes but not now. Waiting time can stretch to an hour and there is no guarantee that one can get into the overcrowded bus,” said Sreyoshi Majumdar of Uttarpara on the way to her shop in Salt Lake.