The Maharashtra State Road Transport
Corporation is established by State Government of Maharashtra as per the
provision in Section 3 of RTC Act 1950. The M.S.R.T.Corporation is operating
it's services by the approved scheme of Road Transport Published vide
Notification MVA 3173/30303-XIIA dated 29.11.1973 in the official gazette.
The area covered by the scheme is entire
area of the State of Maharashtra. The undertaking is operating stage and
contract carriage services in the entire area of the state of Maharashtra
except S.T. undertaking defined under Section 68 A (b) of M. V. Act and other
exception published in the scheme. The Present Maharashtra State Road Transport
Corporation(M.S.R.T.C.) represents the confluence of three streams for
providing passenger road transport in the public sector. These related to the
Pre-1956 Reorganization states of Bombay, Madhya Pradesh and Hyderabad.
However, in chronological sequence, the place of pride for providing public
road transport services goes to the Hyderabad state.
First bus having been flagged off from the
Pune to Ahmednagar in 1948.
It's a story that had a hesitant
beginning, with many people then not giving the State Transport (ST) bus
service more than a couple of years of existence. Standing today by this
milestone of 58 years, its position of strength speaks for itself - 16,000-odd
buses, 12,000 employees, about 70 lakh citizens utilizing the service daily.
Tracing the history that saw this development, we go back to the 1920s, when
various entrepreneurs started their operations in the public transport
scenario. Till the Motor Vehicle Act came into being in 1939, there were no
regulations monitoring their activities, and this resulted in arbitrary
competition, unregulated fares. The implementation of the act rectified matters
to an extent. The individual operators were asked to form a union on defined
routes in a particular area. This also proved to be beneficial for travelers as
some sort of schedule set in, with a time table, pick-up points, conductors,
and fixed ticket prices. Thus continued the state of affairs till 1948, when
the then Bombay State Government, with the late Morarji Desai as the home
minister, started its own state road transport service, called State Transport
Bombay. And the first blue and silver-topped bus took off from Pune to
Ahmednagar.
The driver and conductor used to wear
khaki uniforms and peak caps. There were 10 makes of buses in use then -
Chevrolet, Fort, Bedford, Seddon, Studebaker, Morris Commercial, Albion,
Leyland, Commer and Fiat. In the early 1950s, two luxury coaches were also
introduced with Morris Commercial Chassis. These were called Neelkamal and
Giriyarohini and used to ply on the Pune-Mahableshwar route. They had two by
two seats, curtains, interior decoration, a clock and green tinted glasses. In
1950, a Road Transport Corporation Act was passed by the Central Government and
it delegated powers to states to form their individual road transport corporations
with the Central Government contributing one-third of the capital. The Bombay
State Road Transport Corporation (BSRTC) thus came into being, later changing
its name to MSRTC with the re-organization of the state.
The ST started with 30 Bedford buses
having wooden bodies, coir seats and the fare charged on the Pune-Nagar route
was nine paisa. Having seen the ST undergo many changes, lists them off as-
increasing the seating capacity from the original 30 to 45 to the present 54,
introduction of all-steel bodies to replace wooden bodies to make them stronger
and cushion seats for more comfort. Later, in 1960, aluminium bodies were
introduced as steel corrodes, especially in coastal areas, and the colour code
also changed to red from the blue and silver. A partial night service was
launched in 1956; the overnight service about a decade later and the
semi-luxury class came into being during the Asian Games in 1982. Significantly,
the ST does not only carry people but also takes care of the postal mail,
distribution of medicines, newspapers and even tiffins to children studying in
the bigger towns. In rural areas, it aids farmers to transport their goods to
the cities. All this in the face of bad roads, recurring losses, hiked taxes
and yet it retains its identity of a transport service for everybody.
MSRTC is operating a fleet of
approximately 16,000 buses that ferry 7 million passengers daily on 17,000
routes.[3] The Ordinary, Parivartan, Asiad and City Buses are built at MSRTC's
in-house workshops at Dapodi, Aurangabad, and Nagpur on Ashok Leyland and TATA
chassis. These workshops produce as high as 2,000 buses per annum on an
average. The corporation has 9 tyre retreading plants along with 32 divisional
workshops. The Shivneri Fleet consists of Volvo 9400R Buses and Scania
Metrolink buses.
No matter what, the ST reaches every
village that is connected by road, however bad it may be, truly living up to
its motto of jithe rasta, tithe ST' (where there's a road, there's a ST bus)!
Did the ST buses start in Maharashtra in 1950 o 1973?
ReplyDeleteDid the buses first use Petrol or Diesel?
ReplyDelete