One has heard of competition between two states on improving facilities for public and implementation of welfare schemes.
But here is a strange situation when one state is asking the other state to burden the people with additional taxes so that there is some uniformity.
This might sound strange but the Telangana State Road Transportation (TSRTC) on Tuesday asked the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) to increase bus fares of the passengers.
With effect from June 9, the TSRTC increased the bus fares abnormally in the name of diesel cess. This has resulted in higher bus fares being run by the TSRTC to Andhra Pradesh.
On the other hand, the APSRTC bus fares are comparatively lesser as there is no such diesel cess.
According to reports, the APSRTC bus charges are lesser by Rs 35 in super luxury buses and Rs 90 in AC buses. As a result, the passengers travelling from Telangana to Andhra are preferring to travel only in APSRTC buses, leaving the Telangana buses unoccupied.
This has resulted in TSRTC incurring losses instead of additional income due to increased cess, while APSRTC is making more revenue from increased occupancy.
Realising the situation, the TSRTC authorities have written to the APSRTC authorities to increase their bus fares also, as according to the inter-state agreement, there should be parity in bus fares and the number of buses plying between the two states.
The APSRTC is said to be examining this proposal. If it accepts TSRTC demand, then, Andhra people, too, have to shell down more bus fares soon.
At present, as many as 535 buses are running from AP to Telangana every day. If bus fares go up, it will be a huge burden on the passengers!
