Odisha Private Bus Owners Withdraw Strike Call On Tuesday After Talks With Govt

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Private Bus Owners’ Association has withdrawn its call for statewide strike from Tuesday after the state government agreed to fulfil some of their demands.

Speaking to media persons on Monday, the Association’s secretary Debendra Sahu said the government has fulfilled 3 of their 10 demands at the meeting on the day. Since their 3 basic demands have been fulfilled, they have decided not to go ahead with their plan to keep the buses off the roads.

He said the government has agreed to their demand for revising its Vehicle Scrapping Policy. While the policy mandated that all buses that are 15 years old would not be allowed to run, the government has now agreed to raise it to 20 years, he added.

Besides, the government has allowed the bus owners to run the sleeper coach buses in day time and implement the transfer of permit, Sahu said.

However, he said the government has sought more time to consider their other demands. If it fails to take any step in this regard by January 31, he threatened that they would be forced to resort to agitation.

IT may be noted that the association members had staged a demonstration in front of the State Transport Authority (STA) in December 2022 to press their eight-point charter of demands.

On January 7, the state Transport department secretary met a delegation of the association to discuss the issue, but the talks failed to yield any results.