Chandigarh, June 29
Members of the ruling AAP and the Congress on Wednesday sparred in the Punjab Assembly over the resumption of public bus service from Punjab to Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA).
During the Question Hour in the ongoing budget session of the assembly here, Congress MLA and Leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa asked Transport Minister Laljit Singh Bhullar how all of a sudden, public bus service to the IGIA restarted.
Bajwa pointed out that the bus service from Punjab to the IGIA was stopped in September 2018 by the Delhi government and despite writing several letters to the AAP-led Delhi regime, the bus service was not restarted.
Notably, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Punjab counterpart Bhagwant Mann on June 15 had launched the luxury bus service from Jalandhar to the Delhi airport.
“All of a sudden now, the permission has been granted for plying the public bus service (from Punjab to the IGIA). I want to ask what change in the law has taken place now as for the past five years, buses from Punjab could not ply.
“Under which law it (the bus service) was stopped and now under which rule, it has been restarted,” asked Bajwa in the House.
Transport Minister Bhullar accused the previous government of not having any intent in restarting the bus service and wanted to favour a family.
Bajwa further pointed out that the former transport minister Amrinder Singh Raja Warring had even met Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal for the restart of the bus service and “we were denied this”.
He claimed that the state transport undertaking suffered a loss of Rs 5 crore per year and Rs 25 crore for five years on account of buses not being allowed to ply to the Delhi airport.
Warring told the transport minister that 13 letters were written by the then ministers in the Congress government for restarting the bus service and also added that he had even taken up the issue with the Airport Authority of India in this regard.
Warring asked Bhullar to produce any document relating to giving permission for restart of the bus service to the IGIA.
Warring asked the transport minister if there was any Supreme Court ruling which allowed for the restart of the bus service to the airport.
Bajwa accused the transport minister of misleading the House.
There were heated exchanges between the members of the treasury benches and the Congress MLAs after a remark by Congress legislator Sukhpal Singh Khaira.
AAP, Congress members spar over restart of bus service from Punjab to Indira Gandhi International Airport
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