Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) on Friday handed over cash prizes to women passengers who won the Rakhi festival draw, in an event organised at Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station here.
As part of the contest, TSRTC had kept drop boxes at all major bus stations, regional offices and other places with high passenger movement and requested women to drop their tickets in them with their name and phone number written on them to be eligible for a draw. According to officials, around 3.5 lakh women dropped their tickets in the boxes.
Though the draw was held on September 5, the winners were brought to MGBS from across districts and felicitated. Each of the 11 regions saw women winning a first prize of ₹25,000, a second prize of ₹15,000 and a third prize of ₹10,000.
A seven-year-old student from Adilabad district, K Pranjal, travelled to Gudihatnura so that she could tie a rakhi on her brother’s wrist. She won the second prize.
TSRTC Vice-Chairman and Managing Director V.C. Sajjanar, Executive Director (Operations) Munisekhar V. and Regional Manager (Ranga Reddy) A. Sridhar were present.
More buses on the anvil
Mr. Sajjanar said the TSRTC would soon add another 1,000 buses to its fleet by either November or December. In addition to the existing eight, special buses for women will soon run on another four routes (113 Z/M, 222A, 9X/272, 9Y/F). Much like the Rakhi draw and prizes, Dasara, Sankranti and Ugadi too would see festival draws for women. The idea was to honour women, he said.
The corporation also intends to spread a sense of goodwill among passengers and show them that its bus services are reliable and safe.
Aside from generating a revenue of ₹22.65 crore in a single day, it also received the patronage of 40.92 lakh passengers, a record. TSRTC has vastly improved in terms of occupancy ratio, with 20 depots recording over 100% occupancy.
TSRTC officials said that over the past few years, especially since the pandemic, there has been a sustained effort to reduce losses, which were incurred on account of increasing fuel and cost on personnel, and improve revenue. Efficiency has also improved, they said.
