AGARTALA, March 22 (TIWN): With the cut in the bus fare of the Agartala-Kolkata route via Dhaka, it is expected that the passenger for by-road may increase.

It is to be mentioned here that Shyamali Tourism and Shouhardya Tourism has reduced the bus fare from Rs. 2, 000 to Rs. 1, 800.

The fare has been deducted on both the routes, to and fro. It is expected that with the cut in the bus fare, the number of passengers may increase.

Despite of spending lakhs of fund to kick off the Agarala-Kolkata bus service, it fails to cater passengers.

On the other hand, as the handwritten passport is declared invalid it has also catered several problems for the common people, and they cannot travel to the neighbouring countries easily as they earlier did.

It is to be mentioned here that despite of spending huge amount of money to commence the bus service from Agartala to Kolkata via Dhaka, TRTC is now suffering due to lack of adequate number of passengers.

Now with the cut in the bus fare from Rs. 2, 000 to Rs 1, 800 it is expected that the number of passengers may increase.

The service was formally launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart, Shiekh Hasina, in the presence of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, during their visit to Bangladesh earlier in the month of June.

Run by the West Bengal Surface Transport Corporation (WBSTC), it takes 12 hours to reach Dhaka and another six more to reach Agartala.

It is to be mentioned here when the first commercial bus service (Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala) took off from Karunamayee Stand in Salt Lake, it had 37 passengers, including Nidhal and his parents. The service was flagged of at Dhaka during the Prime Minister’s visit.