Proposal to buy 100 city buses passed

During RMC general body meeting

Raipur, June 11, 2012

The RMC’s general body has finally passed the proposal to buy 100 city buses amid strong protest by opposition BJP which alleged that the ruling Congress intended to benefit a specific company into the bus-purchase deal and staged walkout from the House on Monday.

As expected, the opposition created scene in the House when the proposal to buy 100 city buses was tabled in the House during general body meeting. The opposition prominently targeted the ruling Congress on purchase of 65 mini city buses and had heated exchanges with its members for about two hours. 

The opposition said that over two years delay in purchase of city buses had increased the estimated purchase cost to Rs six crore. The BJP member Prafulla Vishwakarma charged that the Congress had twisted the proposal to buy 100 city bus and tabled it again in the House after six months. He said if the House passes any resolution then it could not be tabled again but it had happened in case of agenda related to city buses. 

Targeting his own party, Congress member Lakhwant Singh Gill said why the RMC wanted to buy city buses only from only manufacturer Tata and do not have other alternatives like Mahendra. He also grilled the ruling Congress over the work-plan for operation of city buses. Meanwhile when he was interrupted by independent corporator Mrityunjay Dubey who defended the agenda, Vishwakarma stood and supported Gills concerns.

Congress corporator Gyanesh Sharma said the fund to 100 city buses would come from the Centre and the initiative to buy the buses was taken by Mayor Kiranmayi Nayak.

The debate over city buses heated up with participation of leader of BJP corporators Subhash Tiwari and Congress corporator Pramod Dubey. Both Congress and BJP members started shouting in the House. The municipal Speaker Sanjay Shrivastava proposed to conduct voting on city bus agenda. But the BJP corporator Suryakant Rathore interrupted Shrivastava and said the ruling party should have first tabled budget proposal which was not passed in the previous general body meeting.

He said the House should first debate on budget instead of city bus agenda. Amidst allegations and counter-allegations by the BJP and Congress members, the Mayor said the opposition could not demand for voting on city bus agenda as very rarely had such methods adopted during previous term. This irked the opposition members who started shouting slogans against the Mayor and staged walkout. When they did not return to House, the ruling party unanimously passed the proposal to buy 100 city buses.