Former transport minister of Delhi Haroon Yusuf, staging that the DTC is in need of restructuring to serve people better, alleged that the previous Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) regime and the incumbent BJP government failed to revive the public transport system.
Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, the Congress leader said that the DTC, on which the commuters heavily depend, is in heavy losses, making the public transport system weak.
He claimed that around 14,000 new buses are needed to be inducted into the city fleet to revive the transport corporation and to make it profitable, as presently, it is under a burden of thousands of crores and a total restructuring was the only way out, he added.
Yusuf claimed that during the last six months, the BJP government deployed 400 DEVi electric buses, which he said was too little, as in the last one-and-a-half years, 2,400 buses have gone off the roads, while a deadline has been set to phase out 1,700 buses by next March.
He also claimed that during 2012-13, 46.77 lakh people used to travel by DTC buses every day, but there has been a decline of 45 per cent passengers to 22-25 lakh by 2023-24.
Yusuf further claimed that 99.15 per cent of buses running on the roads now are overage, increasing the fuel consumption load and spike in air pollution.
Hitting out at the previous Kejriwal government, he alleged that they just spoke of bringing in new buses for 11 years, but not a single new bus was added to the DTC fleet.