Revealing that civic body had scrapped 1,696 old buses by March 2023 and will have to scrap another 541 by March 2024—which will result in the reduction of self-owned buses to 1,100, thus violating the MoU—the new BEST General Manager Vijay Singhal has shot off a letter to Iqbal Singh Chahal, the BMC administrator, seeking Rs 3,419 crore to purchase 2,237 buses in a “phased manner” so that the self-owned fleet number touches 3,337.

The BEST Workers’ Union had filed a petition in the industrial court highlighting the fact that the undertaking had started reducing the self-owned bus fleet and was willing to procure buses on a wet-lease basis instead.