While inducting minibuses is on the cards for Delhi Transport Corporation’s ever-reducing fleet, there seems to be little hope left for the

low-floor buses that were introduced in 2009.

DTC has failed to procure any new low-floor buses for almost three years now and according to sources in the DTC, it’s the “monopoly of Tata Motors that’s responsible for it.”

Tenders after tenders have been issued to procure new buses over the last three years, but all efforts have failed to procure any new buses. According to sources in the DTC, Ashok-leyland is not participating this time in the bid and being the only major player, Tata is making all efforts to “dictate terms”.

The main bone of contention is the Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) that DTC signs with the manufacturers making them responsible for maintaining the buses for the period of the contract, said a source, adding that Tata is trying to circumvent the AMC this time and is refusing to provide buses if its terms are not accepted.

According to DTC, Tata has signed a 12-year contract with DTC and is failing miserably to maintain the buses it has earlier provided and is being fined heavily for all the breakdowns that happen regularly. Hence, it doesn’t want to be responsible for the maintenance for any new buses it provided.

“In that case, the onus of maintenance will come to us and how would we maintain themIJ They just want to provide the buses and then whether they run properly or not, they don’t want to be responsible for it,” said an insider.

DTC has the approved capacity of 5,500 buses, but is running only 4,700 buses at the moment. Out of those, around 900 buses are old normal-floor buses that will soon need to be phased out. It has been trying to procure around 1,300 new buses that will keep its fleet at 5,500, but all its efforts have failed.

Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS) is also supposed to be running 5,500 buses according to public-private partnership (PPP) terms, but is currently running only 1,200 buses. It also hasn’t acquired any new buses for the last three years.

If new buses are not acquired immediately, the pressure on the current fleet of buses will be huge and inconve-nience to public will be massive.

To overcome this challenge, DTC is working on a proposal to procure “midi buses” that are of the sizes between minibuses and large buses.

“If this proposal works out, we can quickly procure new buses. Also, since there are multiple manufacturers for this category of buses, the competition will lead to better price and reasonable terms; and no player will be able to dictate their terms,” said a source.

It must be noted that statements have been made recently by Delhi Government hinting the privatisation of DTC.