Even as the Telangana cabinet is meeting on Saturday to discuss the RTC issue, everybody is waiting curiously as to what decision Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao would be taking with regard to the fate of state road transport corporation and 48,000-odd employees associated with it.
According to the reports coming from the government sources, KCR is looking into various options to resolve the present crisis.
The most possible decision he might take on Saturday was privatisation of public transport and wind up the RTC altogether.
The question arises as to what would he do with nearly 50,000 employees of the corporation.
According to sources, KCR is planning to follow Madhya Pradesh model, wherein the government there had wound up its RTC way back in 2005 after it continued to pile up losses.
The employees were offered a voluntary retirement scheme. Now, private operators in Madhya Pradesh run 35,000 buses with the government providing them with the requisite permits.
A similar situation exists in Chhattisgarh, which followed the MP model and does not have an RTC.
In Jharkhand too, at the time of bifurcation from Bihar, the new State had decided against having a State-owned transport corporation.
However, there, the RTC employees allocated to Jharkhand were absorbed into different government departments. And Jharkhand then privatised all the bus routes and gave 6,000 permits to private buses which now provide transport services to the people.
The Central government has amended the Motor Vehicle Act’s Section 57 on September 1, 2019, empowering States to give route permits to private bus operators and provide them with an opportunity to extend their services to the people.
“So, it remains to be seen which model KCR will follow -- Madhya Pradesh model by offering VRS to the RTC employees or Jharkhand model wherein the employees were absorbed into various departments. Both the cases involve huge financial commitment from the government,” a source in the government said.