Supreme Court not satisfied with govt affidavit on electric buses

New Delhi: Expressing its dissatisfaction, the Supreme Court on Monday called “deficient” an affidavit filed by the Delhi government on issues related to the procurement of 1,000 low-floor electric buses, and asked it to prepare a comprehensive plan within six weeks.

The court said the government’s affidavit was “deficient” as the issues required a detailed comprehensive plan, including the details of availability of funds, land for bus depots, charging stations, nature of electric buses and infrastructure for an intelligent transport system.

“Tell your people not to be in a hurry because in hurry, you will have problems. Have a solid plan about it. You can have experts for this,” a bench comprising Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta told additional solicitor-general Pinky Anand, who represented Delhi government.

Ms Anand told the court that she would instruct Delhi government to come out with a comprehensive plan on it taking into consideration the issues raised by the bench within six weeks.

The bench also questioned Delhi government’s proposal to use funds collected from the environment compensation charge (ECC) for procurement of electric buses.

“It (ECC funds) is to be used for particular purposes and not for substituting money which you have got from the Union of India or which is a part of your budget. Newspaper reports say Delhi has potholes on roads. You cannot use these funds for repairing potholes. That’s part of your job,” the bench said.

The court said that the budgetary allocation for procurement of buses for public transport should be used for this instead of funds collected under the ECC. “You purchase buses. There is no difficulty on it. Your budgeted money is supposed to be used for it,” it said.

At the outset, the ASG said that Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS) has been appointed as consultant for procurement of electric buses. Advocate Aparajita Singh, assisting the apex court as an amicus curiae, told the bench that budgetary allocation were made earlier for procurement of buses in Delhi but Rs 150 crore allocated for it was not used by the Delhi Transport Corporation.