Bus ticket sale stops in Ctg

Sale of long-distance bus tickets for travelling from Chittagong on Saturday has been halted ahead of the 29 Dec Dhaka rally of the BNP-led 18-Party alliance.

Chittagong Bureaubdnews24.com
Published : 27 Dec 2013, 06:07 PM
Updated : 27 Dec 2013, 06:08 PM

Though Inter-District Bus Owners Association office-bearers on Friday said they would operate Dhaka-bound buses provided there were passengers, people at ticket counters said they were not selling tickets for Saturday in fear of sabotage.

BNP leaders said police and the administration had asked bus owners not to run their vehicles – an allegation denied both by police and the operators.

Many passengers were seen given back their advance tickets for Saturday.

Ticket sellers at Damparha counter of Green Line bus service said they would not operate any Dhaka-bound bus on Saturday and Sunday.

Asked for the reasons, one employee said the owners had decided to halt operations.

Damparha counter staff of Unique, S Alam and Hanif bus services also said they would not run any bus bound for Dhaka on Saturday.

BNP leaders in Chittagong alleged that police and the administration had asked the bus operators to keep suspend services to prevent people from joining the ‘march to Dhaka’.

Chittagong metropolitan unit of the party Shahadat Hossain told bdnews24.com that police and the administration were obstructing the leaders and activists of the Opposition parties from travelling to Dhaka.

Chittagong Metropolitan Police’s Deputy Commissioner Masud-ul-Hasan, however, denied putting any pressure on the bus operators to suspend their service.

Chittagong Inter-District Bus Owners Association General Secretary Kafil Uddin Ahmed also denied being under any kind of pressure from the government.

“If anyone doesn’t want to operate one’s bus for security concerns, it’s the individual's own decision,” he said.