Jaipur: Snubbing the Uttar Pradesh government, led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the Rajasthan government has billed the former Rs 36 lakh, for using their buses for evacuating students stranded at Kota and urged them to pay the dues at the earliest.
The UP government, which had earlier agreed to the proposal put forth by Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi, to ferry migrant workers in 1000 buses, later claimed that the buses belonged to the Rajasthan government, headed by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, and were not private vehicles.
Addressing a press conference over this issue, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma asserted that the Gehlot government did not provide buses to help students and the transportation was undertaken by them.
He further stated that; if they (Rajasthan) have to sent buses owned by government, they should send it to Maharashtra and Punjab.
Earlier, the Uttar Pradesh government had sent 560 buses to Kota to bring the students from UP to their home state. They were the first state to initiate steps to bring back their natives stuck in other states during the lockdown, which was done after students in Kota had sent desperate messages to the state govt asking to be brought back.
Accordingly, between April 17-19, 560 buses sent by UP government had returned with around 10,000 students from Kota in Rajasthan. But later, many students who had not registered initially also demanded to go back to Uttar Pradesh and to ferry the additional students, UP government rented 70 buses from the Rajasthan Transport Corporation.
When the Corporation asked for money for diesel, the UP government had stated that the same will be paid later. But as the Corporation didn’t agree to that, Rs 19.76 lakh was paid for the fuel.
But now, the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan has sent a bill of Rs 36,36,664/- to the UP government as rent for the buses from Kota to Agra and other places in UP. The letter sent to the UP state transport corporation asks the amount to be transferred through RTGS.
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