Varanasi tourist bus owners demand waiver of road tax, interest-free EMI

VARANASI: Banaras Tourist Transport Association (BTTA) has warned to stage a demonstration outside the chief minister’s residence in Lucknow in the first week of June if their demands, including waiver of road tax, interest-free EMI and relief package for the drivers, are not accepted soon, said a BTTA official.

“Owners of the buses will go to Lucknow in first week of June and will stage a demonstration there in front of the chief minister’s residence and will apprise the CM of their demands and poor economic condition, if their demands are not accepted in next one week,” said Shashipratap Singh, BTTA spokesperson.

Singh said that Covid-19 have devastated their business as foreign tourists have stopped coming to the city since March 2020.

“Domestic tourists are too not visiting the city. As a result, the bus owners had to stop operating their tourist buses. These buses are parked at parking lots for which each operator is paying Rs 3000 per month,” Singh said.

He said that the bus owners have apprised the transport department authorities about their plight by sending memorandums to the transport commissioner twice. “BTTA members have also called on UP tourism minister Neelkanth Tiwari to draw his attention to their problems. But, no one has paid their attention to our demands,” Singh said.

Prabhakar Pandey, a bus owner, said that the owners who bought buses on loans are not in a condition to pay EMIs. “We demand interest-free EMIs till the situation becomes normal as buses are parked for the last 16 months,” he said.