Private bus firms using illegal tricks to skip taxes
Many techniques have been adopted by private bus operators to avoid road permit and taxes.
Officials from the Telangana Road Transport Authority have registered as many as 2,007 cases against the erring private operators (until December 28) and have seized about 200 buses. The Joint Transport Commissioner J. Pandurang Naik said 7.6 crore had been collected from private bus operators towards compounding fee and tax penalties.
Rangareddy District Transport Officer M. Praveen Rao said most of the private bus operators were violating permit rules.
“They take permits for fewer seats and later, set up more seats inside the vehicle. Most of the cases booked by Rangareddy officials are related to permit violations apart from running buses as stage carriers against the permit for contract carriages,” he said.
Also, Mr. Pandurang Naik said as per Motor Vehicle Act, private bus operators are required to depute two drivers for one bus and the second driver should always be present in the vehicle.
“Most of the private bus operators do not follow this rule and we are booking cases against violators. A few others are also fabricating tax receipts and during our raids, we identified such cheating by comparing the data with our own tax collections,” he said.
And many private bus operators obtain permits for just one or two districts but end up plying vehicles across all districts and even as interstate buses. “In such cases, we immediately seize the vehicles and impose compound penalty as per the Act,” he said.
Shockingly, in a few cases in this year, it was found that bus operators were running two buses with the same registration numbers, on a single road permit.
Mahbubnagar DTO G. Mamata Prasad said that three separate teams from Mahbubnagar, Wanaparthy and Nagar Kurnool — operating under her supervision — registered a total of 74 cases against private buses plying along the lucrative Bengaluru national highway.
“From December 21 to 24 last year, we conducted special drives along these routes. Most of the cases registered against private buses were for the illegal transportation of goods. Interestingly, in some cases, we found that the buses were moving more goods than passengers,” she said.
Ms. Mamata Prasad and Mr. Praveen Rao said teams of inspectors would continue their special drives until private travel operators stopped such illegal practices.