Even as the YSR Congress party cries foul and continues its vicious campaign against the free bus scheme that was rolled out last week in Andhra Pradesh, the ‘Stree Shakti’ travel scheme is turning out to be a massive success as there has been a tremendous response from all quarters of the state ever since its launch by the NDA government.
The much anticipated scheme, which was launched on Independence Day across the state, has been gaining huge traction among women passengers with average footfalls crossing 10 lakh passengers every day. On weekdays, there is a huge jump in the number of women commuters who are utilising the facility. This is an unbelievable response and also bigger than what the government and the Andhra Pradesh Road Transport Corporation initially assessed before the start of the scheme.
As per government sources, more than 55 lakh passengers availed this scheme in the first five days and thereby generated a collective saving of more than 30 Crores for the women population in the state. The ground level response has been quite tremendous and Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu is buoyed by the reception of this welfare schemes which is one of the six ambitious promises made by the NDA coalition prior to the 2024 elections. He directed the officials to regularly monitor the ground level issues while facilitating the scheme and remove all bottlenecks for smooth roll out.
Despite a targeted negative campaign by the YSR Congress party over some of riders relating to exceptions in not extending the facility to a few categories of buses, the free bus scheme emerged as a tremendous success in just a few days of its launch. Women passengers from different age groups are availing this facility without any inconvenience.
Meanwhile, RTC Chairman Konakalla Narayana Rao announced that the free travel scheme has been extended to buses plying to Tirumala also. There has been some backlash over the denial of extension of the schemes to these buses initially. However, the government intervened and ensured that the scheme is available for women devotees travelling to the hill shrine.
