An apex body of private bus operators union on Friday demanded that a regulatory panel be formed by the Transport department to address the problems plaguing the non-government stage carriages plying in the city and elsewhere in West Bengal.

Despite private buses carrying 85 per cent load of the passengers on a daily basis, the state transport department is not doing its bit to encourage banks to come forward for issuing loans to bus owners for buying new 'BS VI' vehicle which is mandatory as per guidelines to phase out 15-year old vehicles, Joint Council of Bus Syndicate secretary Tapan Banerjee said in a statement on Thursday.

"We had been asking for setting up of a regulatory panel consisting of automobile experts, senior state officials and others to address the crisis situation faced by the transport operators.

"Bringing out a new vehicle, conforming to the anti-pollution norms, will cost not less than Rs 30 lakh for an owner who is faced with the situation to scrap his old vehicle after attaining 15 years of age if he wishes to continue in business," Banerjee said.

The panel apart from taking up the cause of the bus operators with financial institutions, will also factor issues like hiking bus fares which had been pending for past seven years and the "arbitrary imposition of fines by traffic police in Kolkata and other towns of state on charge of violation of traffic rules," he said.

"We are always ready to cooperate with the state for an end to the chaotic condition on roads but the police and administration are only singling out private bus drivers and conductors in road safety drives but remain indifferent to the role of the buses run by state transport undertakings, auto rickshaws and e-rickshaws," Banerjee said.

He said autos and e-rickshaws and other small vehicles jostle with buses and crowd the road space across the state but the onus to follow traffic rules falls on the private bus operators.

"Also instead of issuing separate challans for traffic violation fines, the traffic police in Kolkata are often found jotting down the figures on the time sheet issued by the syndicate to record the arrival and departure of a bus at the depot which is illegal," he said.

"While the government spends crores of rupees as subsidy for state transport buses, private buses are ignored and overlooked," the statement by the bus association addressed to the Transport Minister Snehasis Chakraborty, said.

About the recommendations by the state transport department to private bus operators for launching a digital app which will update about the movement of buses plying on routes, Banerjee said, "We also want to switch to smart transport mode. Already we have introduced the panic button service in all the private buses. But such a move to link the entire private bus service in a seamless digital network can never yield results in a piecemeal manner." The association also demanded GST on diesel to help bus operators tide over the losses.

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.