BEST issues notice to Causis firm over non-supply of 700 double-decker e-buses

The civicrun Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport BEST undertaking on Monday served a blacklisting notice to private firm Causis EMobility for its alleged failure to supply 700 electric doubledecker buses as per a contract awarded to it a senior official saidBEST general manager Vjay Singhal told reporters the premier public transport undertaking had awarded tender for supply of 900 doubledecker electric buses to two firms of which Causis EMobility was to provide 700Causis has neither supplied buses or the prototype as per the contract Hence a blacklisting notice has been served to the company today Legal action is also being planned he saidBEST will issue a fresh tender for supply of 700 doubledecker buses and will also urge the government to recover the difference from Causis if the rates quoted are higher than the one at which it was given the contractI dont know why the blacklisting notice was not issued earlier It should have been issued much earlier Nevertheless we have issued it now Singhal saidThe BEST GM also said he had called a meeting of officials of Switch Mobility which has to supply 200 buses on wet lease at his office on TuesdayThe firm had supplied only 12 of these 200 doubledecker ebuses he claimedPointing out that the fleet size of BEST had gone down beyond imagination Singhal said it will start getting new Olectramake single decker AC electric buses from August September and the company has assured to deliver all 2100 buses by March endOnce we had 4000 plus buses in the fleet and now we have 3100odd buses Singhal said adding that BEST should have invited more small tenders for buses instead of waiting for court orderIf this was done some 400500 buses would have joined the fleet by now he said adding that the undertaking needs 55006000 vehicles considering the size and population of MumbaiBEST is the second largest public transporter in Mumbai and the adjoining metropolitan area after the suburban railway network and ferries around 30 lakh commuters per dayIn a release in October 2021 Causis had said it had secured an order to supply 700 buses the initial lot of which would be brought from its Jaipur plantThe remaining buses would be manufactured at a plant it would set up in Pune the release had saidCausis officials could not be contacted for comment on the blacklisting noticeThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever