After spending two days puzzling over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in Puducherry, the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking has decided to start bus services to Puducherry.
In his speech in poll bound Puducherry, the Prime Minister had said that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would make the BEST before expanding BEST to Business Hub, Education Hub, Spiritual Hub and Tourism Hub.
After initially pondering on methods to make use of this, including changing the acronym of the undertaking to something else, BEST decided that they will operate buses to Puducherry.
Senior officials confirmed the development to our jobless reporter Sootbootki Sarkar. An official on the condition of anonymity said that BEST had enough experience running buses through other jurisdictions, to far off localities such as Badlapur and Virar and more importantly it knew how to deal with other transport bodies. He added, “We’e sure that out counterparts in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are not like NMMT who decides to stop our buses from entering their depots” to our reporter.
Another official added that BEST was considering its fleet of six Volvo buses that were lying at the Oshiwara Depot for the journey. “If Tamil Nadu can run those Volvo buses from Chennai to Pondicherry, why can’t we run them from Mumbai?”, he asked.
On being asked about the pandemic, we were told that anyone who was entering Maharashtra on these buses would have to mandatorily take an RT-PCR test while boarding. When our reporter further pressed on the results of the test, they said, “Mumbai aate aate test result bhi aa jaega”.
Note: The above article is meant to be humourous. Please don’t register a police complain or send goondas to the writer’s residence. If you see a BEST bus in Puducherry, please pinch yourself.
P.P.S: The Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) used to run its fleet of Volvo B7RLE buses from Chennai to Puducherry. Here is a picture of it. You can read more about it here: The Escape Velocity of JnNURM buses
