Ten buses of Delhi Public School (DPS) were seized by the RTO officials on Saturday morning for violating permit conditions, at Innovative Film City in Bidadi.
The buses, ferrying around 200 teachers, had crossed the limits of Bengaluru City and reached Innovative Film City, while they had permits only to ply within Bengaluru Urban district. Innovative Film City falls under Ramanagara district.
Joint Commissioner, Transport Department, Narendra Holkar told Deccan Herald, “The school buses are meant to operate only as school buses, which are supposed to take children from home to school and back within Bengaluru Urban district. In this case, the buses were not permitted to cross Bengaluru Urban, which they did. They had also crossed into Ramanagaram RTO limits, when they are not even supposed to cross Bengaluru Rural. After we notified the school, the school authorities brought all the relevant documents and showed it to us. We released the buses later considering that there were so many women and they would not be able to go home from the place where the bused has been seized.”
DPS secretary Maqsood Ali Khan told this newspaper that the school would follow all regulations in the future. “We did not know that the permits were only for Bengaluru Urban region. Our school teachers wanted to go an excursion as the academic year is coming to an end. None of them or us were aware of the limits of the permits. We were surprised when we got a call that the buses had been seized. Then we produced the original documents and after clarifying what the regulations were, we told the RTO that we would follow the law and that we weren’t aware of the regulations. Later, they released the buses, and our teachers were brought back home.”
The documents of the buses have been submitted to the RTO. The school will get them back on Monday after the court takes a decision in this regard.
RTO official Holkar said a charge sheet had been filed in the court and the school will have to respond to it, following which the documents will be released. DPS should take back its documents after the court’s direction in the matter. The school has to pay a penalty as decided by the court. The RTO estimated that the fine could be in the range of Rs 50,000 to 60,000.