Kullu: Faced with a constraint of public transport facilities, students of Thatibid and Gopalpur panchayats in rural Banjar valley of Kullu have demanded additional bus service to the area as the people of the region were being denied public transport.
Recently the students, after an altercation with public carrier Himachal Roadways staff, held a protest, raised slogans against the authorities and submitted a memo before the administration about the public transport problems they were facing.
Lokesh Kumar, one of the students who participated in the protest said, “the number of commuters waiting for the bus at Ghamir stop was more than the carrying capacity of the vehicle and as the students and others tried to reason with the bus staff for plying more buses, we were maltreated. In return the students held a protest march and submitted a memo to the sub-divisional magistrate at Banjar.”
For long we have been facing a shortage of public transport bus service and have placed our demand before the administration for an additional bus for our region”, said Deevan Singh, another student who protested adding, “if an additional bus is added, our problem could be resolved.”
Sub divisional magistrate Mani Ram Bhardwaj, when contacted by Hill Post said, “Demand of Banjar valley residents is genuine as there is only one bus in a day for the Thatibid and Gopalpur area, which definitely is insufficient for the population residing in the region.
Having registered the protest by the students, the magistrate said that he would submit the memo to the higher authorities. “I’ll try my best to sort out the problem,” said Bhardwaj.
A theater artist, a script writer and a TV anchor, news is something that grips Renuka. She lives in Kullu.
