Bus fires send Delhi government into tizzy

Concerned over the spurt of fire incidents in the newly inducted low floor buses, Delhi government officials on Thursday will meet the representatives of the manufacturing company Tata Motors Ltd.

Concerned over the spurt of fire incidents in the newly inducted low floor buses, Delhi government officials on Thursday will meet the representatives of the manufacturing company Tata Motors Ltd.

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A fire was reported in a low floor bus at Moti Nagar in North Delhi early Thursday.

“The main agenda at the meeting will be to find out the reasons behind the incident,” a Delhi government official said Thursday. The meeting was called following a fire incident in a low floor bus Wednesday evening. Though nobody was injured, the incident was the third of its kind in a week.

The incidents have been a setback for the Delhi government's plan to phase out the fleet of privately-owned Blueline buses before the Commonwealth Games next year and replace them with 3,500 low-floor CNG-fuelled buses.

Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) has 3,559 buses, including 631 non-AC and 25 AC low-floor buses and 2,903 standard-floor buses. The entire fleet of the state-run DTC is fuelled by compressed natural gas (CNG)