By IANS,
New Delhi : In the third incident of its kind in the past 10 days, a low floor bus running on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) caught fire early Thursday in Delhi. Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said these incidents were “completely unacceptable” and promised “timely action”.
The bus on route number 832 between Janakpuri and Inderlok caught fire at Moti Nagar. No one was reported injured in the incident.
“I was driving the bus but when I noticed the fire. I quickly asked all the passengers to evacuate the bus. Within a few minutes, the whole bus was burnt,” Mahendra, the bus driver, said.
Expressing concern over a spurt of such incidents in the low floor buses, Dikshit said:
“We will take action. We don’t want such incidents to repeat. These incidents are completely unacceptable.”
She also directed state Transport Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely to meet representatives of the bus manufacturing company (Tata) and the company providing bus tyres (J.K. tyres).
A few days ago, another low floor bus had caught fire near Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital. No one was injured in the incident.
Earlier, a DTC (Delhi Transport Corporation) school bus caught fire in east Delhi. Timely action by the bus conductor and the driver saved the lives of many children.
Northeast Delhi MP and state Congress chief J.P. Agrawal said: “These incidents are unfortunate and action will be taken. But at least these low floor buses are better than old and broken buses.”
The incidents have been a setback to the Delhi government’s plan to phase out the privately-owned Blueline buses before the Commonwealth Games next year and replace them with 3,500 low-floor CNG-fuelled buses.