Passengers travel atop buses to cast votes

Tension prevailed at Koyambedu after private bus passengers staged a protest over operators demanding additional charges on Wednesday evening. The police had to use mild force and chasing to disperse the protestors.

As the Tamil Nadu elections fell on the first day of a long weekend, thousands of people gathered at the CMBT to board buses to their hometowns to exercise their democratic duty. Though the transport department had announced special buses on Wednesday, many passengers complained that even regular buses were not operational from 7 pm.

Outstation passengers who opted for private buses staged a protest alleging that operators demanded additional charges for tickets.

On information, a police team on patrol duty rushed to the spot and asked the agitators to disperse. When the crowd refused and argued with the police, they had to resort to mild force.

As no steps were taken to operate additional buses, passengers who waited till early Thursday started travelling on top of the buses.

Similarly, chaos continued at Perungulathur bus terminus as several people, who could not find seats on buses, risked their lives by traveling on rooftops of the government buses on Thursday.

Hundreds of people travelled from Perungalathur to Villupuram, Tindivanam, Thiruvannamalai, Gingee, Cuddalore, Puducherry and Chidambaram. Sources said that the number of buses operated from Perungalathur was fewer than the usual as some drivers went to cast their votes.

Passengers started to scramble up the buses even as the drivers and conductors tried to stop them. R Kalavathi, who was trying to reach Tiruvannamalai, said, “I had travelled home during earlier elections, too. But never faced such a problem. The lack of proper arrangements this year made the travel extremely difficult for us.” Seeing a large number of people travelling on the roof, some of the conductors climbed up there to issue tickets.

Facing flak for the poor transport arrangement that led to chaos at Koyambedu bus terminus, the Transport Department said on Thursday that it has made arrangements to operate special buses to ferry people from their native districts to Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai from Friday to Sunday. In a statement, the State Express Transport Corporation (SETC) claimed that it had operated additional buses to complement regular services from April 16 to cater to the passengers travelling to other districts from Chennai ahead of polls.