New Delhi, Jan 17 (IANS) After months of waiting, Delhi will get its first of the 300 proposed electric buses with women and differently-abled-friendly features on Monday.
"Happy to share that Hon'ble CM @ArvindKejriwal will flag off the 1st Electric Bus on Delhi roads today at 12 Noon from DTC IP Depot," Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot tweeted this morning.
According to the Delhi government, as the name suggests, these buses will be environment friendly as they would emit zero per cent smoke and run fully on electricity. These 12-meter-low floor AC, E-buses will have CCTV cameras, panic buttons enabled to ensure women safety as well as pink seats. Besides having GPS and live-tracking, these buses will have kneeling ramps for the differently-abled population.
"The first prototype of the electric bus has already reached Delhi and will be inaugurated by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday (January 17). Fifty e-buses will be inducted into DTC's fleet by the second week of February and the target to admit 300 e-buses is likely to be achieved till April," Gahlot had said Friday while inaugurating 100 new AC CNG buses in the presence of the Chief Minister at Rajghat.
Besides being differently-abled friendly, the newly inducted low-floor CNG AC buses, launched on January 14, are fully compliant with BS-VI emission standards and are equipped with state-of-the-art facilities like a real-time passenger information system, CCTVs, panic buttons and GPS, among others.
The induction of these 100 buses took Delhi Transport Corporation's (DTC) fleet to an all-time high of 6,900. Prior to this, Delhi saw 6,000 buses in the fleet of Delhi Transport Department during the Commonwealth Games, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said Friday. In the month of November, the Delhi cabinet had approved the induction of 190 low-floor AC CNG buses -- 100 of which have already been launched, under its cluster scheme.
The Cabinet had further said that 300 electric buses will also be inducted into the DTC fleet by the start of 2022 -- a target which is likely to get completed in April.
While three UP Police constables involved in the video have been suspended, the VHP members who attacked the young man and woman have not been taken action against just yet.
Thursday's order assumes significance in view of the fact that a possible early judgement in the case could have implications in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as the Ayodhya dispute has been a major electoral issue in the last over 30 years.
Abhilash Tomy was left adrift 3,500 kilometres from western Australia with a serious back injury when he was rescued through an internationally coordinated effort
He said during the last 10 years of rule of the SAD-BJP alliance, these civic bodies including the municipal corporations and improvement trusts were transformed into "den of corruption where irregularities and scams were the order of the day".
Hisar-born badminton World No 1 and Olympic medal winner Saina Nehwal appears all set to tie the nuptial knot with Commonwealth Gold Medallist Purupalli Kashyap sometime in December.
A 35-year-old woman claimed on Wednesday that police forced her to sit atop a jeep and paraded her through her village in Punjab’s Amritsar district when they failed to arrest her father-in-law.
