Odisha’s Private Bus Owners To Start Indefinite Strike From Oct 10

Bhubaneswar: Private buses will go off the roads from October 10 with the Odisha Private Bus Owners’ Association  calling for an indefinite strike across the state.

The Association gave the strike call after a meeting of district private bus owners’ associations on Sunday, said its general secretary Debendra Sahu.

He said the meeting was convened to decide next course of action after the state government did not meet their demands despite successful 24-hour ‘Chaka Bandh’ in undivided Koraput region on October 2.

“The private bus owners resorted to Chaka Bandh in Koraput following the decision taken at general body meeting of the Association on September 27. We had sought meeting with the government to discuss our demands. But the government neither came forward with solution nor deputed any official to attend the meeting,” said Sahu.

Since the government has remained indifferent towards the demands, the Association has decided to go ahead with its decision to launch Chaka Bandh for indefinite period from October 10, he said. “The Chaka Bandh will start at 6 am on October 10 and continue till our demands are fulfilled by the government,” he added.

The bus owners have raised their voice against the government’s Location-Accessible Multimodal Initiative (LAccMI) as it did not include them in the scheme.

The scheme was launched in undivided Koraput on Gandhi Jayant. Under the scheme, the government would run around 1,000 buses, connecting all gram panchayats, block headquarters, district headquarters in Koraput, Nabarangpur, Rayagada and Malkangiri with major cities and economic hubs across the state.

But the Association alleged that the government was running this scheme by procuring old vehicles from a Gujarat company. As LAccMI is for convenience of the people, the bus owners welcomed it. But the government was ignoring their inclusion in the scheme, said a member of the Association.

Also Read: ‘Chaka Bandh’ Agitation Before Roll Out Of LAccMI Scheme In Odisha’s Undivided Koraput