New Delhi: The Gujarat government has not paid more than Rs 22 crore in rent for public transport buses that were hired to ferry people to events that were attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi or the chief minister of Gujarat over the past three financial years.
These numbers were revealed in response to a question raised by Congres MLA Jignesh Mevani in the Gujarat assembly. The data also showed that while only 122 buses were used in 2020-21 to bring people to government programmes that Modi or the Gujarat chief minister attended, this ballooned to 31,211 in 2022-23. In 2020-21, fewer events would have been held due to the COVID-19 lockdowns and subsequent restrictions on physical gatherings. Vijay Rupani and Bhupendra Patel have been chief ministers of Gujarat during that three-year period.
The Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC) said that a total of 34,868 buses were allocated for the Prime Minister and Chief Minister’s events in the last three years.
The government paid Rs 14.27 lakh as rent for the buses during 2020-21 and Rs 8.21 crore for 2021-22. But Rs 74.43 lakh remained unpaid. In 2022-23, the government paid Rs 86 crore for using the buses but Rs 21.41 crore still remains unpaid. In total, the dues pending are Rs 22.16 crore.
The transport department said that “proceedings for the recovery of dues are in progress with the departments concerned.”
Another Gujarat Congress MLA, Kanti Kharadi, asked how many buses were rented to carry people to state government programmes – not just the ones involving the PM or the CM – over the last three years (2020-21 to 2022-23) and how much rent was due. The response said that 21,964 ST buses were assigned for government programmes in 2020-21, 6,898 in 2021-22, and 38,868 in 2022-23.
The Gujarat government paid Rs 112 crore to GSRTC for the buses hired during that three-year period, while Rs 41.01 crore is pending.
Kharadi told the New Indian Express that the government “wasted people’s money on political programmes without paying the rent, which is cheating with people”.
“State transport buses are meant for transporting rural people, not to gather crowds for government events. The rural transport is hit when the government hires ST buses on a big scale,” he said.
