Announced 7 months ago, site for ₹100-cr ISBT project not finalised
Earlier, the ISBT site was proposed near the defunct Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant on the Bathinda-Malout road but officials say there is no confirmation if the transport facility will be constructed in the same area.
More than seven months after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government announced ₹100 crore for a new inter-state bus terminus (ISBT) in Bathinda city, the authorities have not even shortlisted probable sites for the mega development project.
Presently, the bus stand is located in the heart of the city on Mansa road and it leads to traffic congestion.
Authorities of the Bathinda Improvement Trust (BIT), which has been tasked with constructing the ISBT, attribute it to a delay in the official go-ahead from the Punjab chief minister’s office (CMO). At a political event in Maur town of Bathinda on December 17 last year, CM Bhagwant Mann and his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal had announced a package of ₹1,125 crore for development activities in Bathinda.
Kejriwal had announced that ₹100 crore had been sanctioned to meet the long pending demand to build a new bus stand. During the Republic Day function in Bathinda on January 26, 2023, CM Mann had first announced construction of the ultramodern bus stand on the city outskirts to solve the traffic problem of the city.
Earlier, the ISBT site was proposed near the defunct Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant on the Bathinda-Malout road. But officials on Wednesday said there was no confirmation if the transport facility would be constructed in the same area. Deputy Commissioner Jaspreet Singh remained unavailable for comments.
As Bathinda, the largest city in the under-developed southern Punjab, witnessed development in the last few years, the demand to relocate the ISBT was first raised in 2008. The project to shift the ISBT was conceptualised in 2008 during the then SAD-BJP government and Bathinda Lok Sabha MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal had laid the foundation stone of the project at Patel Nagar on the city’s outskirts in 2016. But the project did not materialise after the Bathinda military station objected to the construction in its vicinity. Later, the Patel Nagar site was shelved. There is still no clarity on the new site.
BIT executive engineer Gur Raj Singh said the Trust had demanded 30 acres for the project but the urban local body was yet to get any sanction from the CM office. “Before initiating the work, the identified land will be first transferred to the BIT. But we have no official instruction if any spot has been approved by the government,” he said.
BIT chairperson Jatinder Singh Bhalla, a senior AAP leader, attributed the delay to the imposition of model code of conduct in view of the Lok Sabha elections and the transfer of the former deputy commissioner, who was tasked to identify the land.
“I am not in a position to say which area will be finalised for the new bus stand. We hope that the government will soon take a decision in this regard,” said Bhalla.