55 buses damaged

Buses were also targeted on Pune-Mumbai Highway,Pune-Nagar Road,Pune-Satara Road,Sinhagad Road,Aundh Road,Dengle Bridge,Anandnagar,Swargate,Chakan and a few other suburbs in the city.

Officials said nobody was injured in the stoning incident as BJP-Sena activists attacked the buses after asking the passengers to alight. “They knew even if one person was injured it would become an issue,” said a PMPML official. PMPML spokesperson Deepak Pardeshi said the buses where attacked with stones that damaged front and rear glasses of the buses. He said the passenger traffic was down by at least 40 per cent. Rajendra Konde,conductor of Nigdi-Upper Indira Nagar bus route,said the bus is normally fully-occupied in afternoon,but today there were barely 10-15 passengers.

PMPML Joint Managing Director Satish Kulkarni said they were still counting the losses and the picture would become clear at night. “I think loss could be in the range of Rs 25-40 lakh,” he said.

Pardeshi said just over 1,000 buses plied today and no bus was withdrawn. “But most buses ran empty,” he said.

However,express and local train service did not suffer. The Sinhagad Express heading for Mumbai from Pune was stopped by agitators at Lonavala for five minutes. Later nearly 15 of them were rounded up by police.

“Similarly,the Indore-Pune train was also stopped for five minutes at Lonavala by the protestors,” said railway spokesperson Suhas Lohokare. He said the local trains ran on time and passenger traffic did not see any drop.