Addanki: Energy Minister Gottipati Ravi Kumar and Transport Minister Mandipalli Ramprasad Reddy announced that the coalition government is taking steps to bring the APSRTC (Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation) closer to the common people, and introduced 1500 new buses across the state within a year of coming to power.

Ministers Ravi Kumar and Ramprasad Reddy, along with Bapatla MP Tenneti Krishna Prasad and collector J Venkata Murali, inaugurated five new bus services, including one express service to Tirupati, two express services to Srisailam, and two super luxury services to Hyderabad from Addanki bus stand on Tuesday. Minister Gottipati revealed that the Addanki depot has been allotted a total of 20 new buses since the coalition government took office. He said that 7 buses have already been made available to the constituency’s people, with the remaining buses to be introduced soon. He said that Transport Minister Ramprasad Reddy has responded positively to the construction of a new building for the Addanki bus station.

Minister Gottipati emphasised that the coalition government under Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu is giving high priority to passenger safety. He assured that all RTC buses that have travelled over 13 lakh kilometres will be replaced with new ones. The minister stated that the coalition government under Naidu has prepared plans to allot approximately 2,000 new buses to all depots across the state soon. Minister Gottipati criticised the YSRCP government, which did not purchase a single new bus in the past five years. He alleged that the YSRCP government obtained employees’ votes through deceptive promises of merging RTC with the government. He accused the previous government of causing severe losses to employees and claimed that YSRCP leaders destroyed all systems in the state along with RTC.

Transport Minister Mandipalli Ramprasad Reddy, speaking at the bus inauguration ceremony, clarified that Chief Minister Naidu is putting all systems back on track after the coalition government came to power. As part of this initiative, he said RTC is also being made more accessible to people. He announced that free bus travel services for women will be implemented from August 15th. He stated that buses ranging from village buses to high-tech buses have been made available to every constituency.

MP Krishna Prasad recalled that during his tenure as RTC MD in 2006, Palle Velugu services were launched to bring RTC closer to people. On the occasion, the Energy Minister and other public representatives have requested the Transport Minister to allot AC buses for services from Addanki to Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai.