‘Was like an informal orientation to DU’: How a special bus service connected students from far-flung villages

One of them would get off the bus and bring back the sweet and the box would be passed around carefully between rows as the vehicle resumed its journey.

For these students travelling from Mundhela Khurd, a village at the Capital’s edge, it was a weekly ritual aboard the long green DTC bus called the U-Special.

For many years, it ferried thousands of students from the city’s border villages to DU’s North and South Campuses. By the early 2000s, its numbers started dwindling. And by 2013-14, these buses vanished.

Amit Singh, now a faculty member at Shyamlal College and a member of the National Democratic Teachers Front (NDTF), was one of them. “We were 12 or 13 from the same village. That Tuesday prasad was something to look forward to in a long commute.”

He now teaches undergraduate students who arrive on scooters or take the Metro and may never have heard of the U-Special. But when Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta announced Tuesday that the U-Special buses would be reintroduced, it bought back memories for many like Amit.

“The buses used to start early around 7.30 am and reach the college at 9 am. By 3 pm, it would pick up students after class and drop them home,” says Rasal Singh, Principal of Ramanujan College and a former DU Students’ Union (DUSU) vice-president (2000).

The U-Special wasn’t luxurious. There was no air conditioning, no cushioned seats. Sometimes, the windows wouldn’t open; sometimes, they wouldn’t shut and sometimes even the seats weren’t intact. But for students from Delhi’s villages, it was a lifeline.

“It wasn’t just about money it was also about safety and routine,” says Rajesh Gautam, a faculty member at Ram Lal Anand College, who commuted daily from Bawana while pursuing his MPhil at Hindu College in the late ’90s.

“Many girls started coming to DU because of the U-Special.”

The service, Gautam recalls, wasn’t just efficient, it was an ecosystem. “New students would learn the ropes from seniors about which professor taught what subject… it would be like an informal orientation to DU. We would meet a lot of students… it was inspiring and would motivate us to move ahead. Everyone was very helpful back then.”

On some routes, the boredom of long commutes would give way to something more musical. For instance, the route from Mundela Khurd to Najafgarh, Dwarka Mor, Tilak Nagar, Rajouri Garden took over an hour.

“Students would sing to pass time… One voice would start, and before long, the whole bus would be humming,” Amit recalls.

Sometimes, it was antakshari. Other times, heated debates about campus issues. “That bus was where many of us learnt a lot of things. Back then the bus pass used to be Rs 12 for about 3 months,” Amit laughs.
For students like him, the U-Special did more than just connect homes to classrooms. It created friendships, sparked conversations, and gave structure to a phase of life that was often uncertain and ambitious in equal measure.

The buses began vanishing quietly in the early 2000s. Some chalk it up to the rise of private vehicles and the Metro.

Rasal was among those who fought to keep the service alive. “By 2000, the number of buses had started falling. We were pushing hard to increase them,” he recalls.

“After the ’91 economic reforms, privatisation kicked in. More students got two-wheelers. And slowly, the U-Special was deprioritised.”

But nothing, he says, replaced it. “The Metro helps, yes. But it doesn’t reach everywhere. And it doesn’t offer what the U-Special did — direct routes, familiar faces, a safe environment, especially for girls from the outer districts.”

In 2015, there was a brief, politically charged attempt to revive the U-Special, led by Delhi’s then Transport Minister Gopal Rai weeks before the DUSU election. This was the same year when the Aam Aadmi Party’s erstwhile student wing, Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti, fought its first students’ union election. But it fizzled out in weeks and students called it a gimmick to attract votes.

In 2013, too, in an effort to expand the U-Special bus network, then Delhi Transport Minister Ramakant Goswami inaugurated three DU special routes from North Campus: Patel Chest to Shyam Lal College via Yamuna Vihar, Patel Chest to Najafgarh and Aditi College to Rithala Metro station.

Rasal believes the current moment, with DU expanding its Four-Year Undergraduate Programme and pushing classes from 8 am to 8 pm, is the right time to bring the U-Special back. “You can’t stretch the academic day without making the commute safer and more reliable.”