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.
Private coaching centres in Chandigarh will not be permitted to give tuitions to school-going students from 8 am to 3 pm for 60 days from July 1 in public interest, a senior official said here today.
Eliza Bansal (17) from Punjab's Sangrur district, who topped the prestigious AIIMS MBBS exam this year, wants to serve her hometown Lehragaga which faces a shortage of doctors, her family said today.
Jimmy Sandhu, an NRI who hails from Ludhiana, who was arrested from a private hospital here by a team of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence on June 14, is a key player of an international drug racket busted recently by the DRI, Mumbai zone.
Jammu and Kashmir was pushed into a major political crisis on Tuesday after the BJP suddenly pulled out of the ruling combine with the PDP, bringing down Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti's 27-month-old government amid surging violence in the state.
