The court rapped the AAP government, stating that it has not given any reason to back its claim of unrealistic prices being charged for the low-floor buses
The Delhi High Court (HC) on Wednesday slammed the Delhi government for its failure to comply with a 19-year-old order of the Supreme Court (SC) to procure adequate number of buses in the national Capital.
A bench of acting chief justice Gita Mittal and justice C Hari Shankar said they could easily initiate contempt proceedings against the officials concerned, but they would want the buses on roads rather than the officials behind the bars.
"We can still send you to jail. But what the city needs is buses, not you in jail," the court said as it also pulled up the Delhi government for not buying low-floor disabled-friendly CNG buses in the last 10 years on the ground that their cost was unrealistic.
The court rapped the AAP government, stating that it has not given any reason to back its claim of unrealistic prices being charged for the low-floor buses. "For the last 10 years, you have justified not buying low-floor buses, saying the price was unrealistic without saying what is realistic or carrying out an empirical study," the bench stated.
The court said if there was only a single manufacturer of a specialised product, then the government should go for it by taking into account the interests of the disabled persons as well as the environment.
"You should see what you are balancing the cost against," the bench said to the Delhi government. The court has impleaded Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland as parties in the matter.
The court's remarks come while hearing a PIL by a person suffering from locomotor disability, challenging the Delhi government's move to procure 2,000 standard floor buses at a cost of Rs 300 crore.
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