Delhi High Court permits DMRC to get semi-low-floor buses

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court permitted Delhi Metro Rail Corporation(DMRC) on January 9,2019 to procure semi-low floor mini buses for last mile connectivity from metro stations with the direction to install hydraulic lifts to make them disabled-friendly.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao allowed the DMRC to procure the buses after it agreed to install hydraulic lifts. In an application filed in a pending PIL(Public Interest Litigation) of petitioner Nipun Malhotra, DMRC had sought leeway from court to get semi-low floor buses on the ground to plug the gap in its feeder system of public transport.

Jai Dehadrai, Malhotra’s counsel initially opposed the plea as these buses are not low floor but consented later after the authorities agreed to install hydraulic lifts in these buses.

DMRC requested for the permission to get semi-low floor mini buses saying its fleet of feeder service vehicles was not in a good condition.It said that the state transport department refused to register such buses as they did not have low floors as ordered by the high court in 2007.

It informed the bench that at present it was operating a fleet of 174 mini buses out of which 25 were standard floor and the rest were semi-low floor.

DMRC further said that when it floated tenders for procuring low floor electric and CNG mini buses, it found no manufacturing of low floor CNG mini buses, but the electric variant might be available. It urged high court to relax the strict guidelines in this regard. It assured that it would soon procure the low floor electric buses.