Gautam Buddh Nagar’s transport department has placed more than 1,000 private buses operating through Delhi, Noida and Greater Noida under closer scrutiny after recent incidents involving a bus gangrape and a bus fire, with 47 vehicles seized and 76 issued challans between October 9 and 11.
The department has created a database of private buses travelling from Delhi through Noida to destinations in Uttar Pradesh and other states. Vehicles with deficiencies in fitness, permits or safety equipment have been placed in a separate high-alert category for special monitoring.
According to the transport department, the checks will cover individual buses as well as the wider fleets of their operators. If a defect is found in one bus, other buses operated by the same company will also face stricter inspection. The department has identified missing fire extinguishers and emergency exits among the safety deficiencies being examined.
The enforcement action is being conducted under Operation Kavach against unauthorised and rule-violating buses. Assistant Regional Transport Officer Enforcement Dr Udit Narayan Pandey said the measures were being taken to protect passengers. The department is also processing the suspension of fitness certificates and registrations of buses that fail technical inspections.
The latest action follows an earlier enforcement drive in which 87 buses were proceeded against and 80 were stopped from operating, according to the report. The department has not provided a consolidated public figure for the total number of vehicles whose permits, registrations or fitness certificates have been suspended.
Private buses operating from the Delhi-NCR region serve several long-distance routes through the Yamuna Expressway, including services connecting the region with Agra and destinations as far away as Nagaland. The report said passengers use these services partly because roadways operators do not provide comparable sleeper-bus facilities on long-distance routes. That gap has helped sustain demand for private services, even when vehicles or operators are found to be violating rules.
A separate enforcement concern is the continued stopping of buses on the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway to pick up or drop off passengers. The district administration has prohibited such stops because of the risk of accidents, but the practice is reportedly continuing. The expressway’s role as a high-speed link between Noida and Greater Noida makes roadside boarding and alighting an operational safety issue as well as a permit-compliance matter.
The transport department’s monitoring plan therefore extends beyond one-time seizure drives. Buses identified as unsafe are to receive special checks whenever they return to the road or at regular intervals, while operators with repeated deficiencies face scrutiny across their fleets. The next steps will depend on the technical inspections and the proposed action on the fitness and registration records of vehicles found to be non-compliant.
