AGARTALA, June 21 (TIWN): Despite all odds and with an aim to meet the demand of the land-locked Tripura and to contain the rise in airfares the Tripura Left front government has at last decided to procure the proposal of purchasing luxury buses for the Agartala-Kolkata route via Bangladesh capital Dhaka. Tripura is all set to kick off the commercial service between Agartala and Kolkata and vice versa very soon, while the West Bengal Government has already started its commercial service successfully. The bus fare has been fixed at Rs. 2000 for Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala route.Talking to the reporters here at the civil secretariat, State Transport secretary Samarjit Bhowmik, who has witnessed several historical momentum of the Tripura left front Government under his career said, “We have planned to purchase at least two international Volvo buses to ply at Agartala-Dhaka-Kolkata and vice versa route.”“The buses would reach here at the state by 40 to 45 days and later we would start our direct bus services from Agartala to Kolkata via Dhaka,” Adding Bhowmik said, “We are buying those international standard Volvo buses with an aim for comfort of Tripura passengers.” The introduction of Volvo buses however has of course triggered a question now among the drivers who would be entrusted to drive the Volvo bus, also questions about maintenance as no Volvo maintenance exist in Tripura.

Interestingly Minister for State Transport Manik Dey had earlier said that buying the Volvo buses would be risky because there is no Volvo Company here in the state and also no spare parts are available here. If the bus face any technical faults than several hurdles have to be faced to maintain it, said Dey earlier refusing to buy the Volvo buses.  

The fare was fixed by the West Bengal government to meet their high investment, said official. However, but the Tripura Government is yet to fix the bus fare at the earliest.

Now as the Tripura Government despite all odds have planned to purchase two buses, it would risky for the passengers.

However, it has been a long term demand of the Tripura government to start direct bus service between Agartala and Kolkata via Bangladesh Dhaka, but interestingly the State Govt. here had failed to start the service despite Modi-Hasina flagged off the service on June 6.

To start the bus service soon has of course become a matter of concern for Tripura Government. But it is also mentionable here that the fare of the bus service is yet to be finalised as the West Bengal Government had planned to fix it on Rs. 2000 and the Tripura Government refusing it had asked the West Bengal government to down it into Rs. 1500 for the sake of the land-locked people here.