3 lakh people likely to travel out of city by road for Pongal festival

Passengers thronged the Koyambedu bus terminus and another temporary terminus in the city on Wednesday to leave for their hometown to celebrate the Pongal festival despite rising COVID cases. As of 6 pm on Wednesday, as many as 1.89 lakh passengers had boarded 4,529 buses from the city.

Pongal falls on Friday and Mattu Pongal on Saturday while Thaipusam falls on January 18. Since the State government has declared a local holiday for government offices and educational institutions on January 17 (Monday), people working in the city have started returning to their native from Wednesday.

Since colleges remain closed due to COVID-19, students had already returned to their home town as the crowd was less till the evening. Special buses operated from Chennai and other districts had good patronage throughout the day.

To ensure social distancing norms on the buses, a senior official of the transport corporation said additional special buses were operated on Tuesday to ensure 75 per cent seat occupancy. “We had planned to operate only 420 special buses from the city on Tuesday but we operated 663 buses to ensure social distancing norms are followed to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” the official said.

On Wednesday, the corporation had planned to operate 1,660 special buses in addition to 2,100 normal services. “We will deploy additional bus service as per the requirement,” the official added. Sources in the transport department said that as many as three lakh people would travel out of the city on both the government and private buses on Tuesday and Wednesday together.