The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport Undertaking (BEST) undertaking has pressed the panic button as its self-owned fleet is about to be reduced to just 1,100 buses by March 2024. It has sought financial assistance from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to buy more buses.

At present, the undertaking has a fleet of about 3,124 buses, 1,637 of which belong to wet-lease contractors while the remaining 1,487 belong to the BEST. As per a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on June 11, 2019, it is mandatory and legally binding on the BEST administration to maintain a fleet of 3,337 self-owned buses in its fleet and that for every bus scrapped, the civic body will fund a new one.

Revealing that civic body had scrapped 1,696 old buses by March 2023 and will have to scrap another 541 by March 2024—which will result in the reduction of self-owned buses to 1,100, thus violating the MoU—the new BEST General Manager Vijay Singhal has shot off a letter to Iqbal Singh Chahal, the BMC administrator, seeking Rs 3,419 crore to purchase 2,237 buses in a “phased manner” so that the self-owned fleet number touches 3,337.

The BEST Workers’ Union had filed a petition in the industrial court highlighting the fact that the undertaking had started reducing the self-owned bus fleet and was willing to procure buses on a wet-lease basis instead. 

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