Mumbai: 125 CNG BEST buses back; 275 to return in 2 days

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) restored services of 125 CNG buses on Friday. The remaining 275 will be brought back into the fleet in a couple of days. Officials said Tata engineers have carried out all repair work and issued fitness certificates to buses, which were withdrawn on Feb 23 after repeated incidents of fire. In the last fire incident on Feb 22, a bus was completely gutted. However, the reduced BEST fleet led to long queues and inconvenience to passengers.

On February 22, the transport authority withdrew the Tata Motors' made non-AC fleet after three such buses caught fire in Santacruz, Chakala, and Andheri East.

400 CNG-powered buses taken off roads

The BEST undertaking had earlier stated that approximately 400 CNG-powered buses that were taken off the road will be returned to service only after a written assurance of safety is received from the manufacturer, TATA Motors.

After three incidents of BEST buses catching fire were reported, the BEST tweeted, “In view of the recent incidents of fire in TATA CNG buses operated by M/s Mateshwari Urban Transport Ltd, BEST has decided to take all these 400 buses off road till the original manufacturer and operator takes necessary corrective measures to ensure that it will not happen in future."

Majority of the 400 buses operated from Jogeshwari, Santacruz, Pratiksha Nagar and Dharavi bus depots.