The Opposition UDF alleged in the Assembly on Thursday that the LDF government was slyly bleeding KSRTC to death so that SilverLine would one day become the most preferred means of transport of even the common man in Kerala.
The charge was first made by former transport minister and Congress MLA Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan.
"You are ignoring KSRTC on purpose for SilverLine," Thiruvanchoor said while moving an adjournment motion on the mismanagement of the public utility.
He said the KSRTC fleet had shrunk badly. Now, only 3300 buses are in operation. "During the UDF tenure, there were 6200 buses," Thiruvanchoor said. Transport minister Antony Raju later corrected Thiruvanchoor.He said 3883 buses were in operation.
The number of schedules had also fallen, the former transport minister said. If under the UDF government KSRTC buses had travelled 17 lakh kilometers a day, Thiruvanchoor said that KSRTC buses now travel just 10 lakh kilometers a day.
"There is a SilverLine agenda in this decision to take out 2885 buses from the road," the Congress leader said, though he did not elaborate. He was perhaps referring to the SilverLine DPR that states that the volume of traffic in SilverLine depended on the waning public interest in other modes of public transport like buses and traditional trains.
Opposition leader V D Satheesan repeated the charge. He said that the creation of KSRTC Swift as a separate company would eventually lead to the gradual death of KSRTC. This was a strategy to make SilverLine viable, he said.
"All profitable routes and long-distance services have been given to K-Swift. The remaining uneconomic routes have been retained with the original KSRTC. This will cause huge losses for the public utility, which will eventually be pushed into such a state that mercy killing would be the only way out," Satheesan said.
Transport minister Antony Raju ignored the allegation of SilverLine conspiracy but said that it was LDF that had done more for KSRTC than the UDF. "In the five years under Oommen Chandy, the government had given KSRTC Rs 1543.86 cr. But during the first Pinarayi Vijayan ministry, the government support for KSRTC was Rs 4924 cr. And in the first year of the second Pinarayi ministry, we have set apart Rs 1868 cr, more than what the Chandy government gave in five years," the minister said.
Satheesan countered this saying that this growing quantum of assistance demonstrated nothing but the pitiable condition of KSRTC under the LDF government. "Under the UDF, Rs 1500 cr was enough but under the LDF, with the utility's condition worsening, a support of Rs 5000 cr was necessitated," the Opposition Leader said.
The transport minister, in response to the charge of vanishing KSRTC buses and schedules, argued that the utility's collection had gone up. "You say that the schedules have been cut but KSRTC's daily collection on March 15, two days ago, was Rs 5.98 cr. This is higher than the maximum daily collection of Rs 5.5 cr recorded during the last UDF regime," the minister said.
The minister said that KSRTC was operating 85% of its services even at this time when the travel industry had been badly hit by the pandemic. "Only 56% of private services are operational now," minister Raju said. He said most of the KSRTC buses taken off the road belong to the "C-Pool" category that runs along the least economical routes.
