Against the advice of senior Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) officials, State Transport Minister Dharamrao Baba Atram had his way with a direct bus service from Mumbai to his Aheri constituency in the Naxal heartland of Gadchiroli district.On Sunday, 25 days after the air-conditioned Mahabus service was started on the state’s longest bus route of 1,100 km, it was withdrawn, having incurred a loss of Rs 1,06,044 in just three trips.“As per instructions from our Mumbai office, we have decided to take it off the road from June 10,” said MSRTC regional manager Vinod Ratnaparkhi.Officials said the Mahabus was announced as a bi-weekly service but they couldn’t run it more than thrice since it was started on May 16 for want of passengers: on the first trip, for instance, there were just three passengers who travelled from Aheri to Mumbai.The economics was wrong, MSRTC sources said. Aheri is a undeveloped, tribal area and it would be difficult to expect many passengers from or to Mumbai, especially when the fare is Rs 1,404 and the trip takes 23 hours. Those who do travel from Aheri to Mumbai find it convenient to bus it to Nagpur and then take a train, spending in the process some Rs 600 on ordinary bus and second-class train fares.But at Atram’s insistence, MSRTC began the service. M S Eagle Travel Agency, Mumbai, was contracted to run the Mahabus service, providing the bus and drivers, while MSRTC paid it Rs 9.58 per km, in addition to filling the fuel.But usage was so low that MSRTC was spending Rs 27.42 per km, in turn getting a revenue of just Rs 12.75 per km.“The average load factor achieved during those 25 days was just 23 per cent as against the viable load factor of 40 per cent,” said an MSRTC official. “It essentially ended up serving the Mumbai-Pune segment.”
