There seems to be no end to the stand-off between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh over resumption of RTC bus services in both the states, mainly due to litigation from the Telangana authorities.
Despite several rounds of talks, the officials of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh RTC managements failed to come to an agreement.
While APSRTC used to run 2.60 lakh kilometres per day in Telangana, Telangana used to run 1.66 lakh kilometres in Andhra Pradesh before the lockdown period.
Now, the Telangana RTC authorities are insisting on parity in routes, which was not there in the inter-state agreement. It is demanding that APSRTC reduce its operations in Telangana, so that there would not be any loss to Telangana.
After several rounds of negotiations, Andhra Pradesh agreed to reduce the number of kilometers of operations in Telangana up to 50,000 km and proposed that Telangana could increase its operations in Andhra by 50,000 km, in order to achieve parity.
But Telangana RTC is not agreeing to it. It said Telangana doesn’t have as many buses to run additional kilometres in AP. So, it wants AP to reduce the kilometers by one lakh.
When finally, APSRTC authorities agreed to reduce the area of operation of its buses by one lakh kilometers, Telangana put forth one more demand: that AP should run its buses only between Vijayawada and Hyderabad and for all the other routes, it has to take transport permits from Telangana.
This has further complicated the issue and the stalemate continues.
